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IlIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 1 



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I UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. ^ 



A WORD IN SEASON; 

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REVIEW OF THE POLITICAL LIFE AND OPINIONS 



MARTIN VAN BUREN. 



ADDRESSEB 



TO THE ENTIRE DEMOCRACY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 



" We contenil /"or a well-regulated democracy."— ^o/(« Marshall. 



JOEDICATED TO THE TIPPECAKOE CLUBS OF THE UNION, 



BY A HARRISON DEMOCRAT. 






THIRD EDITION. 



WASHINGTON: 

PUBLISHED BY W. M. MORRISON. . 

1840. 



PREFACE. 



M 4-T 'i 



111 a review of the political hie and opinions of one who lias attained to the suinnnt of official 
honors in the gift of his countrymen, it is deemed both projier in itself, and a duty we owe to 
the dignity of the office, at least, to give some general description of the authorities from which 
wc have derived the facts stated. Of these authorities, that which is entitled, by courtesy, tu 
the first notice, is 

"The Life and Political Opinions of Martin Vax Burew, by William M. Holland," 
published at Hartford, Ct., 1835, by Belknap & Hamersley. This book was written with the 
avowed object, in part, " to contribute to the political elevation of Mr. Van Buren." In the 
preface, (page ix,) the writer expresses his " great obligations to the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler 
for the ability and zeal with which he has on several occasions defended the character of his dis- 
tinguished friend ;" and tenders his " particular thanks to the Hon. James Vanderpoel, who 
lias facilitated the collection of materials for his work," which he professes to submit to the pub- 
lic also as "a contribution to support democratic principles." The I^ife of Mr. Van Buren, thus 
boastfully ushered before the public, and greatly bepraised by the Globe and other party presses 
at the time of its appearance, must have entitled it to be considered authentic and satisfactory to 
the friends of Mr. Van Buren and to himself at the time of its publication. But many of the 
facts stated in this book with the expectation of advancing his ambition thsn, having at length 
commenced to act against him, have given occasion to some of his friends recently to declare it 
to be "a forgery." This attempt, however, to discredit their own production, at this late day, 
has entirely fallen to the ground, as a considerable leward ofiered by the editors of the Madison- 
ian for a "spurious copy," has failed to produce one, or any evidence of such "forgery." The 
cojjy here used is of the first edition of Holland's work, the authenticity of which is admitted by 
Mr. Van Buren, in his letter of 22d June, 1840, to Messrs. W. Fithian, J. C. Alexander, and 
others, of Danville, Illinois. 

" The Political Mirror," &c., published by J. P. Peaslee, No. 49, Cedar street, New York, 
1835, has also afforded an ample source of information, such, too, as is not contained in Hol- 
land's inernoir. This is a work of great merit, and bears an internal evidence that traces its 
authorship to one of the most profound statesmen of the present day. It is a magazine of astound- 
ing facts and astute deductions, so extensive in details and admirable in method as to have drawn 
from an eminent Senator the complimentary expression that " it will form the basis of the future 
history of these disjointed times." 

Also, "A Memoir of Martin Van Buren, compri.'-ing an account of the intrigues by which be 
sought and acquired the nomination and election to the office of Chief Magistrate, together with 
developments of his political character, by A Citizkjt of New York, printed by Jt. W. Ro- 
berts, New York, 1828," has afforded us much additional light. 

A large portion of the facts stated are also derived from public documents in the Secretary's 
and Clerk's offices of the two Houses of Congress, as welt as from various other authentic 
sources, which are referred to, respectively, when the facts are stated. 

We have arranged the whole review in three periods of time. 

The First Period commences with Master Van Buren's apprenticeship to the study of law 
at 14 years of age, and runs to the time of his attaining a seat in the United States Senate in 
1821, giving a summary of his political tergiversations, his perfidy, and his intrigues for politi- 
cal advancement during that period. ^ 

The Second Period runs from the time of his taking his scat in the Senate till he attained 
to the Presidential chair, as the nominee and successor of General Jackson, giving the com- 
mencement of his efforts, and the history of his success, in transferring the spoils system to the 
General Government; his clandestine devices and influences to fucWiXale executive eitcroachmenis 
on the other departments of the Government; and the concentration of all power in the Prcsi- 
deacy before his election to that office, which he confidently anticipated and steadily pursued 
while ho was Senator of the United States, Secretary of State, minister to England, and Vice 
President. 

The Third Period exhibits the uses and abuses he has made of those concentrated pow- 
ers, in the short time which has elapi^ed since his election to the Presidency was consummated, 
by certain clandestine artifices that prostrated the elective franchise of twelve millions of freemen 
at the feet of a military despot in the civic garb, for the benefit of a favorite political adten- 
turer. 

Each of these periods of time are divided into several sections, according to the diversity of 
the subjects they embrace, und they reciprocally run into each other as the elucidation of tlieir 
connecting subjects require; so that the third period is for the most part anticipated by the 
recitals and allusions incident to the details of the first and second. 

The whole is premised with an exposition of the principles of true democracy in contradistinc- 
tion from those of an ambitious faction who attempt to cheat and decoy the peo[)le to their sup- 
port by assuming that honored and popular name. 

Washington, Septeinher 15, 1840; 



PRELIMINARY. 



" We contend for a well-regulated Democracy."^ 

iJQh7i Marshall's speech in the Virginia Convention on the adoption of the Constitution, 



The true Democracy — of Stafesnicn, Fatriois, and lovers of the Constitution — contrasted with 
the false Democracy of restless, ambitious innovators, and enemies of the Constitution. 

One who professes to labor in the cause of Democracy might well be expected, certainly per- 
mitted, to explain what he conceives to be the true meaning of Uejiochact, and in what con- 
sists THE Democratic Cause, particularly as he wholly dissents to the gross perversion of those 
terms in latter times. I will, therefore, previously to entering upon the proper subject of this 
review, devote this pnELiMiXAiir skctioiv to a statement of my sentiments of these terms, 
showing that they are the same with those of the wisest and purest patriots of the better days of 
the republic, contrasted with those disorganising, revolutionary sentiments of the ambitious, 
upstart, radical, and false pretending "democratic leaders" of the present degenerate times. 

A Democracy, in the true American sense, is a well-regulated Government of the People, 
through their representatives and agents — from demos, the people, and krateo, „to govern. 

The Democratic Cadse is the cause of Justice in any community, whether between man 
and man individually, or by classe.s, callings, sections, or associations, legally, geographically, 
or otherwise formed. 

True Democracy is necessarily based upon Justice, because it is an intrinsic principle of 
human rights, which should be held in strict observance as the indispensable rule of the differ- 
ent departments of Government in prosecuting the public good, which could not be attained 
without it; and, especially, it should be unabated in its supremacy over the enactment of laws 
under the Constitution, as well as in the adjudication and the administration of them. Against 
the cause of Democracy and Justice, which are thus shown to be identical, it is clear that all 
violent or sudden innovations on the business operations of society ara as disparaging and de- 
rogatory, 'by the indirect operations of such policy in impoverishing some and enriching others, 
as if the property of the one were violently seized and transferred to the other. 

The cause of Justice, then, strictly so considered, is the true Democratic cause, because it 
sustains the equitable interests and rights of all. And whatever ixditidual, or class, or 
combination, of society may seek politically to advance his or their interests by wilfully in- 
fringing or disparaging the general interests of the community, is a presumptuous monocrat ia 
principle, in the individual capacity, and, in the case of the combination, is a faction, a conspi- 
racy, or a despotism of the many over the few, according to the extent of its numbers, and the 
success of the schemes of injustice. 

Having entertained these sentiments for years, upon now reducing them to paper a reminis- 
cence comes upon my mind, that I have high authority for them, as old as our revolutionary 
history, when all our patriotic ancestors, the Revolutionary Whigs, were considered and 
treated as Democrats, and the Tories alone were excluded or exempted from the honor or the 
odium of the appellation, as it was held on this or the other side of the Atlantic. It does appear, 
however, that, at a later period, when our present federal Constitution was under discussion in 
the several Slates for adoption, there were some symptoms of restricting the term Democracy to 
narrower limits: that is, to the friends of the Constitution, for a time at least, until it became 
the fundamental law of the land ; after which, its veriest enemies may charitably be considered 
as acquiescing Democrats. But during the discussion of the Constitution, the advocates of its 
adoption, the friends of the Union, called themselves "Democrat*," declaring that "they con- 
tended for a well-regulated Democracy ;" while the opponents of its adoption, the enemies of 
the Union, and advocates of separate State sovereignties, called themselves "State Rights Re- 
publicans." How unjustly the former have been since stigmatized as federal consolidationists 
by the latter, who have at the same time filched from them their good old name of Democrats, 
and appropriated it to themselves, I must for the present leave it to the reader to judge. 

I shall give one or two authorities only, to show how universally the friends of the Constitu- 
tion, previous to its adoption, were considered as the true lovers of Democracy, and how all its 
former friends and foes have, since its adoption, been considered to be re-united as one great 
Democratic Party. 

The immortal John Marshall, that learned jurist and profound statesman, the late Chief Jus- 
lice of the United States, when advocating the merits of the Constitution, in debate on its adop- 
tion in the Virginia Convention, said : 



"Mr Chairman, I conceive that ilie object of ihe discussion now before us is, whether domocracy or desi^otism 
be most eligible. I am sure that those who framed the system submitted to our investigation, and those who now 
iuppor. it, intend the csiablishnient and security of the foruirr. The sup|>orters of the constitution claim the title 
of being firm friends of llie liberty and tlie rights of mankind. They say that they consider it as I lie best means of 
jprotecting liberty. We, sir, idolize democracy. Tliose who oppose it [the constitution] have Ijestowed eulogiums 
on monarchy. VVe prefer this system to any monarchy, because we are convinced that it has a great tendency to 
secure our liberty and promote our happiness. We admire it, because we think it a well-regulated democracy. It 
is recormnended to the good people ol this countiy— ihey are, through us, to declare whether it be suoh a plan of 
Government as will establish and secure their freedom. 

" The honorable gentleman (l\Ir. Henry) has expatiated on the necessity of a due attention to certain maxims— 
to certain fundamental princijiles Iroin which a free people ought never io depart. I concur with liim in the pro- 
priety of the observ.'ince of such maxims. Tliey are necessary in any Government, but more essential to a democ- 
racy than to any other. What are the favorite maxims of democracy '.' A strict observance of JUSTICE and 
PUBLIC FAITH, and a steady adherence to virtue.'"— AV/io/'s Edition Va. Debates, page iil. 

" There are in this State, and in every S'ate in the Union, many who are decided enemies of the Union. Reflect 
on the probable conduct of such men. What will they do ■? They will brine amendments which are local in their 
nature, and which they know will not be accepted. They will never propose such amendments as they think 
would be obtained. Disunion will be their object. We contend for a well-regulated democracy V"— Ibid., p. 224. 

Long after the adoption of the Constitution, and even when party spirit was wrought up to 
the highest state of ferment on merely controversial points, hut when all professed to be equal 
friends of the Constitution, Mr. Jeflerson, in his inaugural address, illustiated our democratic 
political identity in the following appropriate manner. He said : 

" During the contests of opinion through which we have passed, the animation of discussions and of exertions has 
sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely, and to speak and to write what 
they think ; but this being now decided by the voice of th- nation, announced according to the rules of the consti- 
tution, all will of Course arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common 
sooi. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, thai, though the will of the majortiy is in all cases to pre- 
vail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonaljle; that the minority possess their equal rights, which eiiual laws 
must protect, and to violate would |je oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one hand and one mind ; 
let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which libert);, and even life itself, are but 
dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which man- 
kind so lon^ bled and suffered, we have yet gained little, if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as 
wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, 
during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long lost liberty, it was not 
wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore— that this should be 
more felt and feared by some and less by others — and should divide opinions as to measures of safety ; but every dif- 
ference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same prin- 
ciple. WE ARE ALL REPUBLICANS ; WE ARE ALL FEDERALISTS. If there be any among us who would 
wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safe- 
ly with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it." 

Now is it not obvious, from the solemn asseveration of these eminent men, conspicuous as 
they were for their opposing controversial opinions, that it never entered the heads of our revo- 
lutionary patriots to exclude any portion of the friends of our independence and of the constitu- 
tion from the great political fold of democracy, and denounce them as arisfocrats, as enemies of 
democracy, as an anti-democratic party, and that, merely because they may have attained superior 
intelUs;ence, education, wealth, integrity, and coiisidirution in society 1 Nay, who ever dream- 
ed of such injustice until this age of political humbuggery, emanating from a fraudulent and 
wicked "spoils dynasty 1" Will those political quacks and imposlers have the impudence to 
pretend that Stephen Girard, in passing from the obscure state of a poor boy to the enviable 
condition of a " millionaire," by his own industry and economy, was at the same time necessa- 
rily transformed into an aristocrat or " an enemy to the cause of democracy T" His whole life 
and his last act in death — his will — fully attest the contrary. He was born and died a demo- 
crat ! The poor logic by which these men would argue the exclusion of the wealth and intel- 
ligence of society from the democratic cause, would operate to the exclusion of Mr. Van Buren 
himself and most of his adherents, who have contrived this humbug to deceive and flatter those 
who may not possess these advantages; but, being considered as constituting the most numerous 
portion of our citizens, would be likely to subserve their political purposes by the success of the 
trick. They also calculate that, by denouncing all the opponents of Mr. Van Buren as enemies 
of the democratic cause, they may decoy many into his ranks on account of their partiality for 
true democratic principles, and may frighten many others from abandoning him, lest they be 
read out of the democratic school. But fortunately for the salvation of the country, the good 
sense of vast numbers is daily undeceiving them by aid of the flood of light that is continually 
revealing the wickedness of his own anti-democratic course, and teaching them that to abandon 
him is the best evidence of their adliesion to the cause of democracy. But let the partisans of 
Mr. Van Buren speak for him and themselves. William M. Holland, his favored biographer, 
explicitly says tltat all the ojiponents of Mr. Van Buren's administration are enemies to democra- 
cy. At page 357, he makes the following precious admissions by way of boasting, viz: 

1. "It may be safely stated that two-thirds of the public pressbs in this country are opposed to llii principles 
of the present administration. 

2. " The PERIODICAL REVIEWS and literary journals lean against the democratic cawsc, withoiu a single ex- 
ception. 

;). " Public seminaries of instruction are under lite same bias. 
4. " The learned profession.? are under tlie same bias. 

.I. " And a vast preponderance of the Literary and oralorial talbnt of the country are under the same bias. 
6. " Wealth, fashion, &,c., are, to a great extent, arrayed against the democratic cause. 

" How, then," he vaunlinjly and sijnificantly-ssks, "does it happen that the people fuiinus the nliove] »re guided 
by opposite sentiments '" 



Piesuiiiing that the reader has a curiosity to know what these sciitiinciils arc, 1 jilace before 
htm the following brief extract from the same book, (page 9 of the preface,) where those sciiti- 
Jiients, which have been generally attributed to the supporters of Mr. Van Buren, and those of 
his opponents in relation to them, are clearly contrasted in a few words. He says : 

" In submitting to the public this contriljution to the support of democratic jirinciples, the author is well aware 
that he sliall not escape the censure of those who anticipate the destruction ol^all political and religious truth, by 
the leveling spirit of democracy." 

He then adds, with levity, that he makes no question of "the sincerity of their melanclioly 
forebodings," and displays a frivolous attempt to escape from the just censure to which he al- 
ludes, by alleging that " if, hy democracy, you understand" what Mr. Roger Collard says of it, 
he is "well pleased with such democracy." Now the democracy which Roger Collard speaks 
of, is precisely the democracy which the whole American people aimed at when they adopted 
the constitution, as described in the foregoing ejttracts from Marshall and Jefierson, and quite 
the reverse of the destructive schemes of that misnomer and humbug called '* Van Buren de- 
mocracy," of whose doctrines, in common with his party, the following is a summary, as alleged 
to have been "always cherished by him," on the united authority, direct and indirect, of the 
New York Evening Post, the Boston Quarterly Review, the Democratic Review, and the 
Globe, viz : 

1. That " anarchy is but a state of transition."' 

2. That '■ human regulations [law and justice] produce an artificial and unjust distribution of properly." 

3. That " Iho only real enemies to workingmen are their own employers." •» 

4. That " wages are worse llian slave labor;" that " the Northern system of labor is more oppressive tlian that of 
the South." 

5. That " universal education is a mockery, and promises no relief for poverty." 

fi. That " poverty is only to be remedied by war and bloodshed, of the poor against the rich." 

7. Thai " the sub-Treasury is paving the way for that catastrophe to come up." 

8. That '• the cause of the inequality of conditions is attributable to religion and the clergy." 

9. That " the complete and final destruction of the clergy is necessary to elevate the laboring classes." 

10. That " the evils of society are not to be cured by cohverling men to the Christianity of the church." 

11. Thai "uncompromising hostility to the whole banking system, and all incorporations, is the ' first steji' of 
their reform." 

12. That " every friend to ' corporations' is an enemy to the laborer." 

13. That " hereditary property is a great evil ;" that ' 'at a man's death, his property must go to the State." 

14. Finally, thai " the rites of marriage should be abolished ;" and give place to the licenliousness of the natural 
slate, of course. 

Of the destructive tendency of the " leveling spirit" of Van Burenism, not democracy, ac- 
cording to the .sentiments just quoted, we have thousands of evidence ; the vei^ atmosphere we 
breathe is pregnant with them ; the resolutions of Van Buren meetings held in the hearts of 
our cities, previously prepared by designing leaders, testify to it; and the speeches by which such 
proceedings are urged in various quarters, show the direction whence they come. Take the 
single resolution f-om many others like it, passed at a Van Buren meeting in Philadelphia not 
a year ago, viz : " That the doctrine of vested rights is at variance with the democratic princi- 
ple ; that chartered privileges (or corporations) arc incompatible with freedom and equality !" 
Take the declaration of Mr. Senator Wright, of New York, in a speech delivered in his own 
ytate during the last summer, and republished in the Richmond Enquirer, viz: that "we have 
nolo reached the period when it is believed to be a common eiiroii to suppose that the revolu- 
tion was complete ,-" that " it is time, therefore, that we should inquircyw what ivas that revo- 
lution undertaken P" that "it was to dismiss monarchy, aristocracy, and itKsroTisM !" 
Now the drift of all this, and a thousand other similar announcements and proclamations, is too 
obvious to be blinked — we cannot close our eyes upon them ; if we do, they are thundered in 
our ears ; and if we stuff' them up to exclude the odious sound, this revenanf of Jacobinipin 
haunts our most inward thoughts. We all know that monarchy has been driven from these 
shores — what, then, remains of the enumerated objects above, to complete the revolution, "to 
be dismissed," (or rather " to be despatched" in the technicality of the guillotine,") but the 
" aristocracy," as Mr. Wright terms it, of wealth, intelligence, and civilization itself, exemplified, 
or rather personified, in the thrifty, industrious, moral, and religious portions of the community ; 
they still " remain," and are characterized by Mr. Wright as a "despotism yet to be dismissed ;" 
and "vested rights," by which every man of property holds his lands, his houses, and other 
effects, are, in set terms, made war upon by the Van Buren partisans of Philadelphia and New 
York ; in which latter city different classes of them have, in advance, adopted the appropriate 
name of HucrE-PAWs, butt-esdeus, point-f.xdkrs, &c. 

All of these and other demonstrations made on the public mind at a distance, are but emana- 
tions from the central executive machinery at Washington, where public sentiment is manufac- 
tured by a conclave under the superintendence of Ainos Kendall, and the clandestine influence 
of Mr. Van Btrew. Some of the out-givings oii\iaX junta were made by Amos Kendall and 
Mr. Benton, in short speeches at the Hickory Club festival given on the 5th December, 1S32. 
Among other things in the same strain, Kendall said : 

" The United States have their youns nnliiliiy system. Its head is the Bank of the United States ; its righl arm, 
a protecting tariff ami manufacturing rrionopolies ; its left, growing State debis and State incorporations." 

Thus, in a breath, and with that imperial brevity so out of place as to cast an air of the bur- 
lesque upon it, does Amos Kendall and his associates and prompter put under the bans of the 



Federal Government, our whole system of import duties, manufactures, State negotiations for 
internal improvements, and Stale incorporations of every description, of which corporate insti- 
tutions the flourishing and provident State of Pennsylvania alone has upwards of two hundred- 

The New York Review for the month of July, in an^rticle on the Constitutional History of 
Greece, as I learn from the National Intelligencer of the 15th August, speaks volumes on this 
subject, of which I subjoin an extract, which is a brief but pointed illustration of our own case, 
viz: 

" Thucydides has sketched the whole philosophy of a ' reign of terror,' the mystery of construclire majorities, 
by which a few bold and crafty spirits dictate their own opinions to the multitudes they affect to obey, and measures 
opposed by almost every individual of a great mass are seemingly adopted with perfect unanimity, in a few words, 
as exactly descriptive of certain recent events as if they had been expressly intended as a history of them. It is 
curious to see what is called, by the political wire-drawers of the day, ' parly discipline,' or, in plain English, the 
art of thinkingfor the people, as familiar to the demagogues of antiquity as to those even of this privileged age." 

And yet, what most unequivocally points out the origin and concert of action I have just 
adverted to, (which can be fully proved by a committee vested with power to send for persons 
and papers,) is the fact, that Mr. Van Bureii has, in the last paragraph but one of his late mes- 
sage at the commencement of the present Congress, virtually endorsed this very denunciation of 
Kendall's against all State incorporations ; to accomplish the overthrow of which he invokes the 
spirit of revolution, per fas aut nefus, peaceably, if it can be so accomplisf.ed, but forcibly, and 
by torrents of blood, if necessary. His words are : 

" To remove the influences whiclr had thus gradually grown up among us— to depiiive them of their deceptive 
advantages — to test them liy the light of wis3om and truth — to oppose i^he force which they concentrate in their 
support— all this was necessarily the work of time, even among a people so enlightened and pure as that of the 
United States. lu most other countries, perhaps, it could.only be accomplished through that series of revolutionary 
movements, which are too often found necessary to effect any great and radical reform ; tmi it is the crowning 
merit of our institutions, that they create and nourish, in the vast majority of our people, a disposition and a power 
peaceably to remedy abuses which have elsewhere caused the effusion of rivers of blood, and tlie sacrifice of thou- 
sands of the human race. The result thus far is most honorable to the self-denial, ihe intellisrence, and the 
patriotism of our citizens; it justifies the eontident hope that they will carry through the reform which has been so 
well begun, and that they will go still farther than they have yet gone in illustrating the important truth, that a 
people as free and enlightened as ours, will, wheiiever it becoines necessary, show themselves to be indeed capable 
of self-government, by voluntarily adopting appropriate remedies ioT every abuse, and submilling to temporary 
sacrifices, however great, to insure their permanent welfare-" 

I grant that this endorsement is made in Mr. Van Buren's accustomed indirect, parenthetical, 
and equivocal manner, not so easily comprehended by the generality of readers, exce])t by the 
aid and comparison of correlative facts; but upon viewing the whole connexion, it is easy to per- 
ceive the ardent purpose so concealed, and for which, if any thing, he should be held the more 
responsible. The confirmations, also, of this purpose of revolution, were they wanted, are 
abundantly supplied by the subsequent acts of his despotic majority in the two Houses of Con- 
gress, in destroying the business corporations of this District as a commencement, in attempting 
to disgrace the States' internal improvement stock by refusing to assume their debts unasked, and 
in attempting to establish a standing army of 200,000 me7i, under the pretence of regulating 
the militia, but to revive the sedition law by the application of the army regulations to the voters 
throughout the country, to the e-xtent of the two-hundred thousand militia so intended to be 
brought under the army regulations. 

If these few facts, selected from thousands that might be recited, are not sufficient to prove 
the settled purpose of revolution, till an authentic investigation by a committee of Congress 
may have an opportunity to do so, I will here add only one other ex-officio manouvre to throw 
further light upon it. 

Amos Kendall, late Postmaster General, who has been authorized to withdraw from the cabi- 
net expressly to launch upon an editorial crusade against the elective franchise of the people, in 
order to accomplish the re-election of Mr. Van Buren, has, in the 3d number of the extra 
Globe, issued a bulletin, of a column in length, addressed to all those of our fellow-citizens 
whom he pleases to denominate " democrats" — whom, on a previous occasion, in his circular 
petitioning for subscriptions to his paper, he defined to be "farmers, mechanics, and working- 
men," excluding all other citizens from that honor. In his bulletin, he says : 

" Foi'RTH OP JrLY.— It becomes democrat? this year to go into the celebration of our great anniversary, not with 
hilarity and mirtli, but with solemnity and fervor. They should go into it with something of the feeling which our 
forefathers did in 1778 and 1779, wlien the British hirelings were attemplini to quench the flame of liberty in the 
best blood of America," &c- &c. 

" Let democrats reflect on these things as they go to celebrate the Fourth of July. Let the reflection make them 
serious and thoughtful. Let them remember the pledges of their forefathers to each other, on this sacred day in 1777- 
'78-'79-'rin-'81," &c. " Let this rememlirance inspire them with tlie resolution of their fathers, and induce them to 
swear their fathers' oath, to live free or die." '• It Is not now they are called on to dt fend their liberty in fields of 
blood. Through your own right of suffrage, democrats of America, the enemy attacks you, and in that is your 
present defence. Your we;,p!ins are as yet those of peace, and by a resnlute use of them, the occasion for resort to 
other means of defence may be forever averted. Bui should you, by listleness and indilfiM-ence, suffer the enemy 
to pet pjssespioa of your Government, of its Trea.'ury, and its army, you may not l)e able hereafter to place 
in Congress, in the Executive cliair, or even in your Slate Legislalm-es,lherepresel*iatives of your choice," &c. &c. 

" Swear on the Fourth of July t'l avert that catastrophe." " Band together, and prepare to March to the polls, not 
with anns, or knives, or clubs, to beat and liutcher your fellow-citizens, but with hearts firmly resol ved, by an honest 
and independeinexerci.se of the right of suffrage, to avert the possible necessity of marching hereafter in battle 
array to put down usurpation ! !" 

The possible election of General Harrison is, then, by this miscreant, Kendall, made the oc- 
casion to excite the partisans of Mr. Van Buren, to prepare, in that event, to march "in battle 



array" to put down *^usurpatio7i .'" as he presumes to stigmatize the success of him or any 
one else at the polls, over Mr. Van Buren ! Is not this an avowal that the present party of 
office-holders already claim the Government as their own; and that they propose, and are 
preparing, to defend its possession, with blood and civil wau ! if they can put a sufficient 
number of the people in the mood, ia addition to the means of the " Treasury and the army" 
already in their hands — nay, that Mr. Van Buren himself has authorized, and is responsible for 
this threat] If any one doubts this, let him bear in mind that this bulletin was issued a few 
days before the passage of the sub-Treasury bill legalizing their posession of the Treasury, in 
all probability to stimulate the party slaves in the House where the bill had slept, and to encour- 
age them with the belief that such an appeal would have a good efiect on their drooping cause at 
the polls. Let him also bear in mind, that though the bill was passed two or three days before 
the Fourth of July, that hallowed day, at 12 o'clock, was desecrated and disgraced by Mr. Van 
Buren, to sign the bill, as "another declaration of independence !" and that the arrangement 
was so announced in advance by the Globe, for stage effect, at the celebrations of the anniver- 
sary, as far as the announcement could reach, in time — and that it was so glorified in Philadel- 
phia by the party. Also let him remember that Mr. Van Buren is the very man who returned 
his cordial thanks to a committee of Philadelphia Van Buren men, a year or two ago, '* for the 
offer of 10,000 minute \nen armed and cquinped as his Ji7-st legion, to execute his orders issued 
or to be issued ! !" and if all these things do not satisfy him of what is intended, if they dare, 
I should say, his dulness of apprehension when his liberty is in danger, but the better fits 
him for a palace slave !! Here is a copy of the resolution and the letter of thanks 
alluded to : 

" 1. Resolved, That the more effectually to uphoUl the cnnstitulional Government of our choice ami of our love ; 
to secure the risiJ enforcing of the laws of Congress, and llie orders of the Executive, either now issued, or which 
may hereafter be issued ; for the preservation and protection of the public lands from the grasp of speculators, and 
securing the nation its constiiuiional specie currency ; to protect United States offlcers in the discharge of their 
pulMic duties, and at the same time the public peace from outrage: We, the sovereign people, do hold ourselves 
ready to organize in this city and county of Philadelphia, a first volunteer legion often thousand men, to be as 
shortly as possible fully armed and equipped, the same to he called The Philadelphia United States Minute Men." 

[For this pledge of support, President Van Buren returned his 'sincere acknowledgments' in the following 
letter :] 

'• Washington, May 29, 1837. 

"Gentlemen:— I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter communicating to nie the proceed- 
ings of a large meeting of the citizens of the city and county of Philadelphia, without distinction of party, held in 
Independence Square, on the 22d instant. 

" It is gratifying to me to learn from those proceedings, that the course pursued by myself and those associated 
with me In the Executive branch of the Government, upon the ijnportant subjects of the currency, foreign trade, 
and the public lands, receives the cordial approbation of so meritorious and respectable a portion of my fellow - 
citizens. 

"I"or this expression of their confidence and good will, and for the accompanying pledge of support and co- 
operation in upholding the authority of the constitution and la"W3, 1 beg you to make to those you represent my 
sincere acltnowledgmenls. 

" Thanking you, gentlemen, for the flattering and friendly manner in which you have performed the duty assign- 
ed to you, I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, M. VAN BUREN. 

" To Messrs. F. Stoever, Israel Young, and Joseph Dean.*' 

Though the foregoing classification of Mr. Van Buren's supporters, as embracing the fanners, 
mechanics, and workingmen, be in a very material degree false — yet it shows what desperate as- 
sumptions the party can resort to, in claiming for their supporters the most numerous classes of 
society, in order, if possible, to flatter and win them to their desperate cause, under the captiva- 
ting banner of democracy, as if these classes constituted the whole democracy or exclusive demo- 
crats, and could dispense with all other classes and callings in society as drones, intruders, and 
nuisances. Whereas, on the contrary, does not the good sense of the farmers, mechanics, and 
working men, teach them that a well-organized community must have the aid of the learned 
professions, lawyers, doctors, divines, the merchants, tradesmen, factors, and transporters, em- 
bracing the whole of our shipping community, &c. &c., whose services, at moderate fees, or 
commissions, enable the former to prosecute their farming and other labors, and thereby econo- 
mize time and profits in their several pursuits, upon the simple principle and first elements of 
political economy so admirably illustrated by Adam Smith, in his dissertation on " the division 
of labor V 

But the truth is, that this classification of their party supporters is a wholesale calumny. 
The real substratum of their party is composed of the tenets of Tom Paine, Fanny Wright, 
Robert Dale Owen, Orestes A. Brownson, and Wm. M. Holland, cemented by the promise of 
sub-Treasury spoils. Independent, however, of this cement, I grant that the captivating licen- 
tiousness of those doctrines has seized upon the ardent passions of many inconsiderate persons, 
and that a vast many others are deceived by the catchwords of '^ democracy" and "the largef 
liberty," not heeding whither the siren notes of their seducers would lead them ; while the in., 
democracy of the couixtry, that is, "the advocates of a well-regulated democracy," are utterly 
opposed to their destructive schemes, and are prepared to cast their votes for Harrison and 
DEMOCRACY against Van Bchen and monarcht. 



In connexion witli the above exposure of the gratuitous classification of Van Burc7i radical 
Democracy, and their revolutieinary doctrines, propagated under specious deceptions, it is proper 



s 

now, in orJer to bring us up to the point of departure, or commencement of this hetiew, to re- 
call the attention of the reader to the fact that Mr. Van Buren's biographer, William M. Hol- 
land, Esq., also virtually assumes the same classification of his supporters, as composing the rea/ 
people, the demochacy of the country, to the exclusion of many other important classes and 
callings of society, as we have seen ; and that he declares that there is " a wonderful harmony 
subsisting between the members of said party." Ho then goes on to explain how and wherefore 
this harmony is produced — which is so pregnant with meaning, more than meets the eye at a 
superficial view, that I shall here transcribe it for reflection. At page 359 he says : 

" Bui the true cause of llie surprising harmony that exists between the President [Jackson] and the people i» 
either not understood by the antidemocratic party, or is misrepresented. The truth is, (says he,) that ihe Presi- 
dent has been sustained in his measures, because tiiey liavp all been based upon a careful observation and ihoruush 
knowledge of the popular will. He has collected and embodied the wishes of the people ; he has felt himself con- 
elanlly to be their agent and minister; and, if he has seemed to lead public opinion, it has been because he is en- 
dued with the penetration which has enabled him io foresee its current, and, by throwing himself al its head, to 
rin^ its full force lo sustain him." 

With an eye to the machinery for the manufacture of public sentiment, established by an official 
junta at Washington, to which I have already alluded, (but which can never be fully exposed, 
except by a committee of investigation, disembarrassed of the impediments of the present Exec- 
utive, who is interested in its concealment, after the example of his predecessor in defeating the 
investigations of other committees,) it is plain that, in so "collecting and embodying'^ the wishes 
of the people, as here alleged, a portion of Executive leavex might easily have been thrown in 
to ferment and modify their intrinsic character, and thereby derive their true origin from the 
Executive wishes, in bringing their full force to sustain himself. But, especiBlly of Mr. Van 
Buren, our author, page 362, says: 

" No instance of bad faith, no example of double dealing, no act of duplicity or disengenumisness has ever been 
fast ened upon HIS political d\).a.ta.cier. His friends challenge tlie strictest s^crulmy on this point, av\<\ invite the 
most unscrupulous exposure." " The public will not be satisfied with vague general chargps— proof must be given 
of specific acts." " Without such proof, the common sense of mankind will be slow lo believe ihal his regular and 
steady progress towards ihe highest honors of the Government, through a long course of public service, is ascribable 
lo the loic artifices of duplicity and cumiing." "His success as a political leader will rather continue lo be as- 
cribed lo Ihe superiority of his genius, the extent of his allainmenis, ihe intrinsic excellence of his character, and. 
to his admirable krtowledge of men. His clear perception of trnih, his predominating good sense, the honesty of 
his own motives, and his sagacity in detecting the motives of others, have indeed endowed him with a rare 
lalenl of harmonizing, concentrating, and DIRECTING ihe varied feelings and exertions of the members 
OP a great party." 

A party I so constructed I as we have seen I Ye.s, he does harmonize, concentrate, and direct 
that misehable party ; so that, out of a great deal of fustian, we have come to some truth, at 
least. And, taking the following from the same concluding chapter 26th, page 355, we find 
the like mixture of truth, with an attempt to impose a gratuitous assertion upon the credulity of 
his readers who are not better informed, and ending, indeed, with a precious avowal. He says : 

" The firm belief of Ihe writer in the most ultra democratic doctrines, and his partial ily towards the subject of 
this narrative, as the champirm of those doctrines, he has not any where affected to conceal." (He says) " No doubt 
this strong bias of his mind lias led him to lake views of certain public events widely different from those which are 
entertained by persons of an opposite political faitli. He has, however, strenuously endeavored not lo distort, con- 
ceal, or misrepresent facts. The incidents (says lie) of Mr. Van Buren's life have been fairly staled, and his opin- 
ions fully displayed." " Tlie friends of Mr. Van Buren (he continues, page 356) ascribe his remarkable elevation 
lo superior ability and virtue; his enemies charge itlo intrigue and accident. It appears, however, lobe universally 
admitted Uial he is endowed with extraordinary'abilities of some kind." (But, says he) " During many of Ihe ear- 
liest years of his public life, lie was denied not only honesty but ability. In regard lo the latter endowment, the 
mouth of calumny has been effectually slopped." " With regard to his integrity and patriotism, and the accordancf 
nf his political principles with the true interests of his country, a snnilar unanimity of opinion cannot, inthe present 
generation, be expected." 

The reader doubtless perceives, from these evidences respecting the classification of partisan 
supporters; their doctrines ; the measures taken to collect and embody their wishes; the skill ot 
their present leader in harmonizing, concentrating, and directing such a party ; the admissions* 
impugning his honesty and ability in early life, and avowing the present want of nnanimity of 
opinion in regard to his integrity, his patriotism, and the accordance of his political principlca 
with the true interests of his country — that much light is gained towards a clear comprehension 
of the bill of indictment and specifications v^hich I now propose to give in outline. In the course 
of its rehearsal, the reader will also be prepared to discern how admirably Mr. Van Vurcn's de- 
fective educatinn, hi.s native cunning, and the tortuous course of his political life, adapted him 
for that consu/innale ivtjxisturc by which he has frequently supplanted his political rivals, or, 
when failing to do so, has given in his adhesion to them fi>r ulterior views, and has finally captured 
Ihe Presidency, as if filched by legerdemain, from the hewildekeii be:?ses of a deceived 
People ! His biographer, page 15, says that — 

"After acquiring the rudiments of an English education, hw became a student in the academy in his native vil- 
lage," where "he made consideralile progress in the various branches of English literature, and gained some knowl- 
edge of Latin. It may be iiifHrred, liowever, [continues he, and sucli an admission in such a place renders it 
certain,] that all lliese acriuisilions were not ereat in amount, as he left the Academy when but fourteen years of 
iige lo Ijegin the study of his profession." [Note. — " The period of study preparatory to admission lo the liar was 
seven years for candidates who, like the subject of this memoir, had not the benefil of a collegiate education." (Page 
26.) feo that, lo make up the defects of education, his cue was, to take lime by tlie forelock, with a fraud upon the 
legal regulation in the cas*, by affecting lo commence his legal studies al fourteen, (which is ridiculous.) in order to 
evade the legal disaljility to be admitted to the bar al the age of -1, in which he nevertheless succeeded.] " Such 
(Bays our author, page 16) was the preparation willi which Martin Van Buren, al tho age of fourteen year.i, c^ivi- 



munced the study of law." [Upon which he exclaims] " What an encouraging eiami.le .Uif s his subsequent suc- 
ceas present to the ycmng men of our country ! Few," says he, " are denied advantages of education equal to those 
which he possessed." 

He ihen says : 

" It is an interesting matter of speculation to conjecture what would have been the effect of a regular education, 
BO called, upon the mind of the subject of this memoir ? He has shown himself to be a profound reasoner, at least, 
in his profession ; yet he probably knew little in early life of the rules of logic, or of the metaphysical disquisitions 
which have professed to teach the art of lliinkin", from the days of Thales io those of Thomas Bmwn. He evinces 
freedom, accuracy, and copiousness in the use ol (the English) lan^uatje ; yi t he had, as we have seen, but a slight 
acquaintance with any of the languages of antiquity. He has acquired habits of patient and accurate research, but 
not from the diagrams' of Euclid, or the mystic steps. of analytic mathemaiics. 

" Such examples of distinguished success" (continues our'infatualed author) " ought, perhaps, to excite sortie more 
thorough inquiry into the usefulness [or uselessness !J in all cases, of our ordinary roiuine of studies." 

" Some persons possess, beyond a do\dit," (says be'> " strong natural aptitudes to excel in certain departments, and 
rreat natural inability to reach even moderate excellence in others. Ought not a true system of education [the 
Van Buren system] to turn the peculiar powers of the pupil to the best account, and to waste no time in attempting 
lo render him a proficient in tho.se branches of science, literature, or an, for which he has neither capacity nor in- 
clination 1 If so, is not that system of questionable utility which forces every student, at a uniform pace, through 
the same round of mathematical and classical discipline, without reference to the peculiar tendencies of his native 
talents 1 

" Again :" (says he, page 18,) " in most of our higher seminaries, the same course of instniction, the samp text- 
books, the same principles in literature, science, and the arts, are presented, year after year, to successive genera- 
tions." " It is not unreasonable to suppose, that yotuig minds, thus moulded upon a uniform system, will generally 
fall into common and uniform habits of thought, and will be led to reason, believe, and act precisely as their fathers 
and teachers have reasoned and believed before them. The strong tendency of the system is to repress inquiry and 
original investigation, to eradicate every idiosyncracy of intellect, and merely to infuse into a passive mind the 
views which have been passively received by those who teach them ! To this kind of discifiline Martin Van Bu- 
ren was never subjected ! Whether to his advantage or loss can only be a matter of conjecture ! !" 

Whether to his advantage or loss can only be matter of conjecture ! Grant you, Messrs. 
Holland, Butler, and Vanderpoel, at least in 1835, when your glorification of Van Buren was 
published, and when the lights of parallel cases of the wild weeds of innovation and disorder 
that are wont to spring up in the uncultivated soi'l of ardent and restless minds, only pointed 
out the probable grounds of conjecture ; but now, in 1840, facts and their consequences have been 
developed in sutRcient abundance " to satisfy the world" that, if such want of " discipline in tlie 
principles and doctrines of our ' forefathers,' " which a regular education would have taught him, 
did not redound to his own individual loss, by eradicating the " idiosyncracies of his intellect" 
and " repressing their native propensity" to inflict innovation and disorder upon our long-ap- 
proved system of Government, the calamities which these undisciplined propensities of his idio- 
syncracy of intellect have brought on the country, through a course of wild experiments, con- 
ceived by the whim of an untutored mind, like that of Ph.ieton, aspiring to ride in and conduct 
the chariot of the sun, do most fully declart; at whose cost the experiments of Maiitin \ xs 
Buren have since been made, and add one more to the thousands of lessons by which poor hu- 
man nature has been taught never to entrust itself to the vagaries of a wild, visionary mind, un- 
disciplined in ethics, morality, and religion, unbalance by contemplating the beautiful symmetry 
and uHchangeable consistency of the physical sciences, so well calculated to curb the political 
adventurer, and to kkep him within the bounds or piiudence, and the appiioved expe- 
rience OF WISER HEADS AND BETTER PATRIOTS. 



FIRST PERIOD. 



"Even at that early age, loo, [fourteen, WHEN Hi! commenced the .'jTrDY of law,] i\Ir. Van Buren is rep- 
resented, by those who knew him, to have hadaspiritof observation, with regard io public events, -dnd {Up personal 
dispositions and clinracters of l/iose around hint, which gave an earne.st of his future proficiency in the science 
OP roLiTics and of the human h-bart." 

'^Holland's Life ami Polilic/tl Opinions of IMarlin Van Buren, paga 16. 



I. Mr. Van Buren s had faith, double dealing, and disingentiousnesss, cxemjtUfied in the 
case of his conduct to De Witt Clinton :■ — united loith the Hudson and Hartford Convention 
Federalists in opposition to Mr. Madison and the late ivar against England : — Rufus King, 
James A. Hatnilton, SfC, his political coadjutors. 

Mr. Van Buren's biographer, William M. Holland, Esq., whether hired or volunteered in the 
cause of his glorification, says : " No instance of bad faith, no example of double dealing, no* 
act of duplicity or disingenuousness, has ever been fastened upon his political character ;" and 
then challenges his opponents to "the strictest scrutiny." Mr. Holland falls far short of sus- 
taining this exemption, as his own book affords many evidences sufficiently subversive of his 
assertion, even without further scrutiny and reference to olher authorities abundantly at hand. 

It is charged on Mr. Van Buren by a respectable citizen of his own State, and confirmed by 
another, both of whom know his hi.story intimately well, and are personally known to the writer 
of this review, that "his whole political life is stamped with inconsistency, treachery, and dis- 
simulation ;" and that "his most liberal proffers of friendship have been swiftly followed by per- 



10 

secution and neglect." Of the truth of this, many ilhiHtrations have been given in the political 
writings of both. Let a few instances in the case of his game of "fast and loose" with De 
Witt Clinton sutTice, viz: In 1812, Mr. Van Buren was in habits of contidential and friendly 
intercourse with Mr. Clinton, and supported his nomination for the Presidency against Mr. 
Madison; (« fact of general notoriety, and admitted by Holland, page 90.) In 1813, after 
the defeat of Mr. Clinton, when his popularity proved an insufficient ladder for Mr. Van Buren 
to rise by, the latter "changed front," and became the advocate of Mr. Madison and the war. 
(Same authority, with much hnastiiig, pages 90, 91.) During several years Mr. Van Buren 
had opposed Clinton's scheme of connecting the waters of Erie and the Hudson by a canal bear- 
ing their name, and finally, on the 13th April, 1816, accomplished the defeat of a bill appropri- 
ating ?250,000 a year during eiglit years, for that object. — {Memoir of Martin Van Buren by 
a citizen of New York, page 20, and his opposition to it acknowledged by Holland page 93.) 
In 1817, Mr. Van Buren having failed through seven years' exertions to destroy the [>i)pularity 
(if Mr. Clinton, adopted the temporizing course of wearing a double front, one for (Minton's 
friends and one for his own, at a legislative caucus held in Albany for the nomination of Gov- 
ernor. He had, through his organ, the Albany .\rgu3, recommended " toleration and liberality" 
among those who "may receive and reciprocate favors." He had procured it to be precon- 
certed among his friends, that, should Mr. Clinton be nominated, they (his friends) should rise 
and retirp from the body. But at that conjuncture, when the ballots had been counted, showing 
a majority in Clinton's favor, Mr. Van Buren rose, and, to the utter confusion and astonishment 
of his co-partisans, moved that the nomination be unanimous. But the minority retired accord- 
ing to agreement, and left Van Buten with his new political associates. — {Memoir of MaTlin 
Van Buren by a citizen of New York, page 2.5.) In 1818, he again forsook Mr. Clinton, 
after discovering that the "toleration and liberality" recommended by his press, the Albany Ar- 
gus, had not produced its intended effect; for, " so far from Mr. Clinton's 'reciprocating the 
favors he had received,' he would hardly extend to him a cold civility." But the humiliating 
reflection to Mr. Van Buren that he had nothing to expect from the confidence of Mr. Clinton, 
in one who had thus suddenly abandoned his own [)arty, did not prevent him from undertaking 
the forlorn enterprise of "worming himself again into their (lonfidence," which he accomplished 
by becoming the advocate of the Hudson and Erie canal. — {See same Memoir, tVc, pages 28, 
29.) Finally, on the occasion of the sudden death of Mr. Clinton, when Mr. Van Buren had 
attained to a seat in the Senate of the United States, he seized upon this favorable position to 
become the eulogist of that great statesman before the congregated intelligence of the nation. 
" Notwithstanding all the circumstances of his ungrateful and base treatment of him, and the 
strong sympathies which his untimely end must have inspired in every breast, Martin V^an Bu- 
ren ventured to improve the opportunity to recover the standing he had lost, by an efliirt to turn 
the sympathies of the people to his own account." "In rising to announce the death of a favorite 
son and idolized statesman, before the assembled talents of a great peo[ile, he dissembled a spirit 
of deep humility ; he professed to have consigned to the same grave with his illustrious fellow- 
citizen, all his feelings of animosity; and painted his chaiacter in the most pathetic and enga- 
ging colors, for which he had artfully prepared himself." "The single fact,'' said he, "that the 
greatest public improvement of the age in which we live was commenced under the guidance of 
his councils and splendidly accomplished under his immediate auspices, is of it-elf sufficient to fill 
the ambition of any man, and to give glory to any name." "This seemingly amazing mag- 
nanimity and disinterestedness of their Senator, who was known to have been the deadly foe of 
their deceased son, had the wonderful effect tiiat was anticipated. The same tide upon which 
Clinton had been elevated, in opposition to every effort of Van Buren, secret or open, was im- 
mediately mounted by him, and on which he was drifted to the highest honors of the State;" 
[being shortly a'ter elected Governor to succeed Clinton.] — {See the same Memoir, pages 32, 33.) 
On the 22d May, 1812, Mr. Madison was nominated for re-election to the Presidency by a 
Congressional caucus at Washington ; and, on the 29th of the same month, a federal caucus 
of the New York Legislature, held at Albany, nominated De Witt Clinton to oppose him and 
the war measure,* of course, then in contemplation. This nomination, wc have seen, .Mr. Van 

* Benjamin F. Butler, Esq. (then Auorney General of the United States, antl now United States .\ttnrney for the 
cily of New York) did, in an eleciioneeriiip leiler dated in March, 1835, addressed to Hush A. Garl^md, then a 
memljer of the Virginia Leeislature, and since elected Clerk of the House of Renresenlativps l»y the locofocoes as 
the further fit insliunient of their party, undertakes •' to deny that there is any iniuET in the niei-e fact of ]\Ir. Van 
Buren's support of Mr. Clinton (right or wrong) ' under the circumstances stated,' tn sustain the imputation of 
opposition to the war." (See Holland, p. 91.) Now, though this is a gratuitous presumption in face of the fact 

S roved upon Mr. Van Buren by indisputalple testimony already cited, yet I cannot but note lis affinity to Mr. 
itchie's pliant doctrine, that there is nothing in his mere oiiprsition to Mr. Van Buren's prim:ipal Uifasuros of 
the sub Treasury, the army of 200,000 men, &c., to justify the inference that consistency should array liim against 
the man. I know of no one who believes with Mr. Kit'cliie, unless Mr. Butler does— and of the sincerity of Mr. 
Butler's opinion in such a mailer, " under the circumstances," the reader may form some judgment, when he is 
informed that Mr. Butler, while Attorney General, frerpieiitly retracted his oilici.ai opinions ai the command of 
General Jackson, and elaborated opposite ones to suit the President's tasle or passion. The ca«e of the Baltimore 
and Washington rail-road is one in point. The company desired that the road should connect with the canal. 
It was referred to the Attorney General, who gave his opinion in favor of the company's right to do so. General 



11 

Buren not merely " concurred in the projiriety of supporting," aa avowed by his biographer, but 
took a verv active part, in stcret concert, with his then federal coadjutors, James A. Hamilton 
and others, to consummate it by rendering Mr. Madison unpopular, under their violent denunci- 
ations of his war measure, declared the June following. The author of the "Memoir of Mr. 
Van Buren," above referred to, says, (page 12,) "Immediately after the declaration of war, the 
federal part)' in Van Buren's county, by his special recommendation and personal contrivance, 
held a meeting which was managed altogether by his 'direction ;' and, on the 8th day of July 
following, the federalists published their address and resolutions, signed by James A. Hamilton 
and others of Mr. Van Buicn's creed of politics at the time, of which this is as ample: 

" Ixcsolred, That the war is impolitic, unnecessary, and disastrous ; and that to employ the militia in otiensne 
war [that is, to enter Canada] is unconstitutional." 

In further illustration of certain changes of positions on the political chess board, it may be 
well here to remark that, while Mr. Van Buren and his federal colleagues of that day were thus: 
opposing Mr. Madison and the war with vituperative virulence, Mr. Ritchie, editor of the Rich- 
mond Enquirer, was, with equal xial, supporting that illustrious father of the constitution and 
the war. In proof of this, I cite the following fact, viz : that, in reporting the proceedings of a 
republican caucus of the Virginia Legislature, held at Richmond on the 12th Fttiruary, 1812, 
to nominate electors for President, at which Andrew Stevenson, Esq., now minister to England", 
was chairman, and Thomas Ritchie, Esq., editor of the Enquirer, was secretary, Mr. Ritchie 
said of the caucus : 

" But one sentiment reigned through the meeting ,- which was, "to give an uNniviiiEn 
suppoftT TO Mr. Madisox." — {See report of proceedings of that day.) 

Though Mr. Van Buren did, after the dtifeat of Mr. Clinton by the re-election of Mr. Madi- 
son, give his support to bis administration and the war generally, yet, as an additional evidence 
of his vacillating course in this as well as the rest of his career, the Senate's Journal of New 
York, for September, 1814, siiows that he opposed the raising of troops, under the recommenda- 
tion of Governor Tompkins, to aid in the war. 

In 1819, Mr. Van Buren successfully advocated the election of Rufua King to the United 
States Senate, and, in a letter to a friend during the canvass, " pledged his head on the propri- 
ety of supporting Mr. King." "Yet," says the author of the Memoir of Martin Van Buren, 
page 39, " at that session of the Legislature, in 1819, he (Mr. Van Buren) profes.«;ed great 
hostility to Mr. King and his federal friends; and accused De Witt Clinton and his friends of 
the political degeneracy of favoring the election of Rufus King, and thereby endangering the 
power, and assailing the principles, of the demociatic party." I also find a virtual confirmation 
of the strongest feature of this staternent in Holland's Life of Van Buren, pp. 143-'44, where 
he speaks of "an extract from what purports to have been a private letter of Mr. V. B. to a 
political friend." Holland says: "Whether this extract is authentic or false is unrxowk to 
the present writer." So im[)ortanta matter was it (in a work gotten up for the avowed purpose of 
glorifying Mr. Van Buren) to set this affair right, that no one can believe the parlies interested, in 
affording Jthe materials of iiiformaiion to the biographer, would have failed to contradict it if they 
could : therefore, we may understand the policy of permitting the authenticity or falsehood of 
it to remain uxkxowx to him. He then, by sheer bravado, gives the extract as the only doc- 
ument, of any kind, which the enemies of Mr. Van Buren have been able to adduce against 
him, which he "leaves, without comment, to the judgment of the reader," viz: 

" 1 should sorely regret to find any flagging on the subject of Mr. King. We [the Albany regency] are committed 
to his support, ft is both wise and honest; and we must have no fluttering in our course. Mr King's views to 
wards us are honoral.ile and correct. The Missouri question conceals, so fa> as he is concerned, no plot, and we 
shall give it a true direction. You know what the feelings and views of nur friends were, when I saw you ; and 
you know what we llien concludfd to do. My " Considorations," &c , and the aspect of ilie Albany Argus, will 
show you timt we have entered on the work in earnest. We cannot, therefore, look back. Lei us not, then, have 
any halting. I will put my 'head on its propriety." 

We shall presently see that Mr. Holland, in the same chapter, p. 146, admits that Mr. Van 
Buren, after Mr. King's election, united in the instructions of the New York Legislature to 
their Senators against the admission of .Missouri, excejit under a negation of her right to hold 
slaves. And in regard to the authenticity of the above extract, the author of the "Memoir," 

Jackson returned the opinion to Mr, Butler for reconsideration, and Mr. Butler then gave an elaborate opinion to 
the contrary— which slopped the railroad a!;Out 100 yards short of th&canal. By the way, in reference to Mr. Gar- 
land's agency in making fair weailirr fur Mr. Van Buren in Virginia, and his subsequeiil call to Washington as 
Clerk to the House, it appears to me that it would be a good rule, whenever we see a conspicuous locofoco brought 
before the pulilic, as the ursan of an electioneering movement at Washinston, to look for him so selected, to make 
a figure in some high office sliorlly afterwards. Mr. Hugh A. Garland was"selected by the junta here as a fit person, 
from liis radicalism and activity in the Virginia Legislature, to do a special party service in his State; and he per- 
formed his task nn duubt, so much to their satisfaction, that a sjjecial messenger was afterwards ilespatched to him, 
to invite him to come to Washington and be a candidate for the clerkship ofthe House— an important office for a 
party who is dispused to abuse it. Every body knows ihe effcient part the Clerk took in setting aside the return- 
ed members from New Jersey, at the commen;;emPnt of the last sessien. Without his acl, (winch was a daring 
and flagitious usurpation, that had not a shadow of leeal ri<rht, even in the House, much less in the Clerk, before 
ihe Contested cases went beforejhe Committee of Election,) New Jersey could not have been disfranchised, nor the 
sub-Treasury bill have been passed, by the mockery of an unconstitutional Congress ! 



12 

alieailv quoted, says: "The original [letter,] of wliicii this is an extract, is in the handwriting 
of, and signed by, Martin Van Buren." — (See Memoir, page 45.) 

It may be interesting to some youthful readers, less informed in political biography than others, 
to say an additional word of James A. Hamilton and Rufus King. Mr. Hamilton was the son of 
Alexander Hamilton, who has ever been habitually reviled by Mr. Ritchie as a " blue light, black 
cockade, federalist." He was one of Mr. Van Buren's earliest political associates, and continued 
to be his fast friend for years, probably without abatement ; for we find him figuring conspicuously, 
in 1828, as the agent or representative of Mr. Van Buren, while acting in the double capacity 
of a delegate of Tammany Hall to escort General Jackson to a festival at New Orleans, and to 
make a |)o(itical demonstration against Mr. Calhoun on his return to New York through the 
South. Also, during the first month or two after General Jackson's inauguration in 1829, Mr. 
Hamilton was selected as Mr. Van Buren's locum tencns, as Secretary of State, till he could 
make preliminary preparations at Albany to resign the governorship he had held about three 
months, and repair to Washington to assume his new station, at the right hand of Jackson, in 
j)erson. But Mr. King was better known as a leading federalist, and a strenuous opposer of the 
admission of Missouri witli her rights to slave property, independent of the legislative instructions 
participated in by Mr. Van Buren. It also delighfelh Mr. Ritchie, and all the nomenclature of 
hie classical correspondents, Romans by name, to vilify every Democratic Whig who has ever 
held social or political converse with Mr. King. Nevertheless, we see it was such men of the 
Federal party (upon whom Mr. Ritchie has lavished more billingsgate than ever fishwoman 
did on her rivals in the market) that Mr. Van Buren acted with, in opposition to the republican 
administration of Mr. Madison, until the defeat of Mr. Clinton and the re-election of Mr. Madi- 
son induced him to " change front" on the Vicar of Bray principle of keeping in favor with the 
^'strongest side" — a principle so dexterouf.ly practised by Mr. Ritchie before him, under the 
temptation of the " loaves and the fishes," till at length he has cornered himself by his inconsid- 
erate vow to "sink or swim" with the "Magician," being too sanguine of his magical powers 
to dupe the democracy of numbers for despotic ends. But for this vow, based probably on some 
private pledges he cannot violate to save his country, I must do Mr. Ritchie the justice to be- 
lieve that his disgusting vociferations in praise of the "Northern man with Southern feelings" 
would long since have been silenced, and substituted by "wraihy invective" and "criminating 
reproaches." 

II. Mr. Van Buren an abolitionist in heart — advocated the extension of the right of suffrage, 
and citizenship, to free negroes in New York, whereby they are also eligible to office; — he 
akn uppr(wes the admission of slaves to testify, in court, against white citizens. 

In the New York convention of 1821, to amend her constitution, "a proposition to restrict 
the right of voting to white citizens, was rejected by a vote of 63 to 59 — Mr. Van Buren voting 
in the majority." — (<S'6e Holland's Life of Van Buren, page 187.) The result of this vote, and 
other passages of the amended constitution, in which Mr. Van Buren concurred, is, not only 
that persons of color are put on a footing with white citizens of his State, in voting at elections, 
and entitling them to participate in instructing their Representatives in Congress, and petitioning 
that body for the aboliiion of slavery ; but they are rendered eligible. to seats in the State Legis- 
lature and in Congress, and to appointment to office in that State — there being no disqualifica- 
tion of her voters in either respect, her voters being continually spoken of in the constitution as 
citizens, from among whom, without any express distinction or disqualification of color, such 
officers are eligible. 

On the agitation of the Missouri question in 1819'-2(l, Mr. Van Bin-en resorted to disingen- 
uous artifices to defeat the rights of that State to her slave property, without committing himself, 
till his plans might arrive at maturity — which the following facts, derived from Holland's book, 
pages 144-45-4(5, plainly show, viz: A few weeks before tiie re-election of Rufus King to the 
United States Senate, (in Feburary, 1820,) cftected mainly by the exertions of Mr. Van Buren, 
as already noticed, Mr. Van Buren authorized the use of his name " in the call of a public nieet- 
ing of the citizens of Albany, to express their opinions on the extension of slavery beyond the 
Mississip{)i," [designed to be hostile to it of course.] A scries of preparatory steps being passed 
through, a memorial to Congress was finally adopted, and Mr. Van Buren's name, as un<Ierslood 
to be authorized, was afi'ixed to it by Henry T. Jones, Esq , which Mr. Van Buren afterwards 
disclitimed, in a letter to Mr. Jones, as transcending his authority ; which, (with a little hair 
splitting,) he said, was a " permission to use my name as a committee to call a meeting of our 
citizens to express their opinion on the Missouri question ;" and adds, "you surely cannot sup- 
pose that the use of my name for that purpose, imposed on me an oidigation to sign whatever 
memorial might be agreed upon by the meeting." The equivocation here, is fully apparent to 
all who know the accordance of the results, with the objects, of called meetings ! Yet, shortly 
after this, Mr. King being now elected, the Legislature immediately passed a resolution " in- 
structing their Senators and requesting their Representatives of the State in Congress to oppose 
the admi.ssion as a State in th« Union, of any territory not compiised within the original bound- 



13 

ary ofthe United States, without making the prohihltion oi slavery thficin, an indispensable 
condition of admission" — "Mr. Van Buukn votino ior thk resolution !" 

Mr. Van Buren lias also vott'd in the Senate of tlie United States to prohibit the introduction 
of slaves into Florida. And his more recent " refusal to enter into diplomatic discussion ofthe 
proposition to admit Texas into the Union," (though a favorite object of his predecessor,) " was 
doubtless to embarrass the growing influence ofthe South, and ultimately to weaken the tenure 
of their constitutional rights." 

Ill his letter to the Hon. Sherrod Williams, Mr. Van Buren advances the opinion, that Con- 
gress has a right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia ; but in order to make this sen- 
timent less offensive to the South, he fabricates a "doubt whether it will be politic to do so." 

But other facts in abundance may br adduced to show the inclination of Mr. Van Buren, and 
his principal adherents, to the abolition faith, and expound the menial reservations of .this great 
dissembler on that subject, among which I may cite the following, viz : When Mr. Van Buren 
was Secretary of State, his principal messenger of the State Department was a vhee negho, at 
a salary of $700 a year; a free ne^ro was, and now continues to be, a messenger and the in- 
ternuncio to the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Paulding, the friend and connexion of Mr. Ritchie, 
and a thorough abolitionist ; many free negroes are messengers in the Treasury Department, in 
the War Department, in the Post Office Department, and in several of the bureaus, at salaries 
that many respectable white citizens would be proud to accept for the like services. About the 
time of the Southampton insurrection in Virginia, a splendid negro ball was given at the 
President's Mansion, which General Jackson honored with a few moments of his presence, and 
was afterwards toasted by the company at their set supper. The excitement of the insurrection in 
Virginia was, in various other ways, fell in this District, as the records of the court will show, 
and one of its consequences was, an attempt *o kill a Mrs. Thornton, by one of her slaves ; who, 
from the atrocious character of the assault with an axe, at the dead of the night, while she was 
asleep, was condemned to be hung; but when the appointed time for his execution approached, 
it was found that he had been reprieved for a short time by the President ; the reprieve was 
again repeated at short intervals, as if to exhaust public expectation, when at last, this midnight 
assassin was finally pardoned — and to evade public indignation, doubtless, vs^as clandestinely 
smuggled out of the city, and sent to Florida. Upon a more recent occasion, when Congress 
began to be flooded with petitions from a distance, for the abolition of slavery in this District, a 
communication being presented to the editor ofthe Globe, by the writer of this review, discussing 
t\ie inviolable right of property \n slaves, as well as lands and chattels, except when "con- 
demned to public use, for an equivalent in money," the said editor, F. P. Blair, peremptorily 
refused to give it an insertion in his paper, (it was afterwards published in the Richmond En- 
quirer,) he, the said Blair, declaring that he totally dissented from the writer, and solemnly 
averred, as his belief, " that Congress has a right to cut the throats of every man woman and 
child in the District .'" Let the reader take in connexion with this, the tact, that the leading 
doctrine ofthe locofocoes, is to tolerate no essential difference of opinion, and that Mr. Blair is 
Mr. Van Buren's prime minister, or oracle of his " improved public press," and he will see that 
we have arrived at something like an expression of concuiTent opinions on this subject, without 
citing, in confirmation of it, the appointments of thorough abolitionists to foreign missions 
and other high trusts. I shall not conclude this catalogue, however, without mentioning Mr. 
Van Buren's approval of the introduction of negro testimony against a white citizen, and that, 
too, under peculiarly aggravated circumstances, in the case of Lieutenant George Mason Hooe, 
a native of Virginia, in the United Slates naval service. In this case the testimony of two 
negroes, the slaves ofthe accuser of Lieutenant Hooe, was taken, and made of record against 
the accused, before a court-martial, which resulted in the dismissal of Hooe from the naval 
service, in defiance of his remonslances against a procedure so revolting to the institutions of the 
South and the laws of Florida, where the trial took place ; Mr. Van Buren endorsing the same 
that he "saw nothing in those proceedings to disapprove."' Yet, this is Mr. Ritchie's boasted 
" Northern man with Southern feelings I" according to that Jesuitical overture, indeed, by which 
Mr. Van Buren falsely professed to betray the North, to cou7-t the South ; which was at once a 
double insult both to the South and to the North. 



III. Mr. Van Buren opposed the adoption of a bill of rights with the New York constitu- 
tion — he opposed the extension of (he elective franchise — and he opposed the amenability of the 
higher officers of State to the ordeal of popular elections: the inconsistency of his sentiments 
on the veto power — his advocacy of long terms and re-elections to the chief Executive — the in- 
consistency of his doctrines and practice respecting the " spoils of office ;^' a system of ivhich 
he was the unenvied author. 

In the New York convention of 1821, to amend her constitution, Mr. Van Buren opposed th^ 
adoption of a Bill of Rights, in connexion with that instrument ; nevertheless such a bill would 
have been in accordance with the practice of nearly every other Stale in the Union ; as, indeed, 
did the Virginia convention strongly recommend the adoption of a Bill of Rights for the federal 



14 

constilution, ami instructed hev delegation in the first Congress to procure, if possible, the adop- 
tion of a Bill of Rights drawn up by the convention. — (See the conctusion of Virginia dcbalef, 
Elliofs edition.) Mr. Van Buren said, on the occasion above referred to, that " he was op- 
posed to a Bill of Rights, as implying some higher authority than the people." — {See HullanJ 
pasrt 198.) This is a sophistry, in guarding the rights of the people, equivalent to taking away 
their body arms to assist them in the right of self-defence. Every horn-book politician knows 
that a Bill of Rights is a summary of fundamental principles, by which the people, through their 
representatives in convention, endeavor to guaranty, a conformity with the limitations of the 
constitutional powers to their agents in the ditTerent departments of Government. — {Sec the de- 
bates, for reasons wliy a Bill of Rights was not adopted with the federal eonslitution.) 

In the same (N. Y.) convention, Mr. Van Buren denounced the principle of universal suf- 
frage as follows : " Upon the proposition to extend the right of sutVragf, Mr. Van Buren ex- 
pressed his fears that the extension contemplated by some of the amendments proposed would 
not be sanctioned by public approbation, and only occasioil ihw rejection of the whole by the 
people; [the people are always thrust forward as the sponsors for his opinions;] that were the 
bare, naked question of universal suffrage put to the committee, he did not believe there were 
twenty members who would vote for it." "His chief fear seems to have been, that the great 
departure from the former freehold qualification would hazard the adoption of the whole amend- 
ment." — (Sec Holland, pp. 181, 185.) Right or wrong, this I it is palpably contradictory to 
some of those vaunted democratic principles he pretends, in his messages to Congress, to pro- 
fess, one of which is that "the only legitimate object of Government is to secure the greatest 
benefit to the greatest number" — a dogma, nevertheless, more plausible than correct, as it is 
liable to involve" injustice, oppression, and danger to the rights of property, the validity of con- 
tracts, and other vested rights of the minority, if the "greatest number" should possess but little 
property, and bo taught by the same party artifices to believe and to will it to be for their good 
?o establish an agrarian law. But to flatter all persons of small property, and newly imported 
foreigners, with this delusion, seems now to be the principal dependence of this great leader of 
party, as is further evinced by the efibrts of his partisans of the Senate in repeated instances, 
and more particularly in their late attempt to establish universal suffrage in the corporation of 
Washington, for the gratification of temporary laborers on the public buildings to control the 
permanent citizens in the management of their corporate concerns. — (See Mr. Senator No- 
vell's report of a bill for altering the charter of the city.) 

Mr. Van Buren also opposed the amenability of the higher officers of State to the ordeal of 
popular elections. Holland, page lUO, quoting from a speech of Mr. Van Buren, (as in most 
other cases of his opinions here ciled from his biographer,) says: "He concurred in the opinion 
which had been expressed as to the impropriety of electing the higher officers of State, he- 
cause TUEiR UUTIES AVEUE iMPOiiTAXT; and it was to he feared that it would have a tendency 
to render their judgment subservient to their desires for a continuance in office." The 
public have been sufficiently informed of similar sentiments expressed in former times by Mr. 
Buchanan, Mr. Grundy, and other advocates of Mr. Van Buren, and wc all know what are his 
professions and theirs to wheedle the people now. 

Mr. Van Buren was a strenuous advocate, in the New York Convention, for conferring the 
veto power on the Governor over the acts of the Legislature, by which he might annul every act 
that is not passed by two-thirds of their number. He urged in favor of it that "The superior 
force and influence of legislative power would secure it against abuse;" that " no man would 
have the temerity, on ordinary occasions, to resist its acts, or check its proceedings;" and he 
referred to the English Constitution, where "the Executive is a branch of the Legislature, and 
has an absolute negative." Yet, "surrounded as he is with prerogative," said Mr. Van Buren, 
" and placed beyond the reach of the people, since the year 1692 no objection has been made by 
a King of Vreat Britain to any bill presented, for his approbation ! Rather than produce the 
excitement and irritation which even there would result from the rejection of a bill passed by the 
Parliament, he has resorted to means, which have degraded the Government and dishonored the 
nation, to prevent tlie passage of bills which he should feel it his duty to reject." — (See Hol- 
land, page 163.) Are we left to conjecture from this whether Mr. Van Buren's more recent 
declaration, in advance, that he would veto a certain bill, be an instance of his "degradation of 
the Government and dishonor of the nation," by resorting to such means to prevent the passage 
of said bill, to relieve himself of the exciting consequences of its veto ! or, is his premonition to 
Congress an evidence of the unceremonious levity with which he now views the superior force 
and influence (the sanctity) of legislative power? And yet, such an advocate as he for the 
" Executive veto," to check the "legislative jxtaer," State and fcdeial, did afterwards, in a 
speech in the Senate of the United States, manifest a holy horror at his own forced construction 
of a veto power of the Supreme Court over ail tlie legislative acts of the several States, and of 
Congress-, under the mere limited right to judge of their constitutionality ! It will be perceived, 
by the following extracts, that Mr. Van Buren's insidious attempts to prejudice Congress and 
the several States against the Supreme Court was as artful in design as it was frivolous in its 
grounds of attnck. On the 7th April, 1826, addressing the Senate, he said : 



15 

'• It Vias been juslly observed, that there exists iint upon this earth, and there never did exist, a Judicial tribunal 
clothed with powers so various and important as the Supreme Court. 

" By it, treaties and laws, made pursuant to the coustiiulion, are declared to be the supreme law of the land. 
So far, at least, as the acts of Congress depend upon the courts for iheir execution, the Supreme Court is the judge, 
whether or no such acts are pursuant to the constitution, and from its judemenl there is no appeal. Its veui, 
therefore, may absolutely suspend nine-tenths of the acts of the national Legislature!" [Why did not Mr. Van 
Buren say the whole, for they could suspend the whole, as well as one, if they should all he unconstitutional. But 
the guarantee against such an exercise of their judicial function, resides in the good sense of Congress to avoid, 
except by casual defect of judgment, such disastrous legislation— saving always, the recent party legislation of the 
aupporlers of Mr. Van Buren himself, and under his prompting, who set themselves above the constitution.] 

"But," says, he, " this is not all. It not only sits in final judgment upon our acts, as the highest legislative body 
known to the country— it not only claims to be the absolute arbiter between the Federal and btate Governments— 
but it exercises the same great power between the respective Slates forming this great confederacy and their own 
citizens. By the constitution of the United Stales, the States are pruhilited from passing any law impairing the 
obligation of contracts." "This brief provision has given to the jurisdiction of llie Supreme Court a tremendous 
sweep ! I" " But of this highly consequential provision, this provision which carries so great a portion of all that is 
valuable in State legislation to the lei t of the federal judiciary, no complaints were heard, no explanation asked, 
no remonstrances niade." [by those who opjiosed the ratification of the constitution.] "It is most mysterious, if the 
constitution was then understood as it now is, that this was so. An explanation of it has been given, how correct 
I know not." * * * 

"But whatever the motive that led to its insertion, or the cause that induced so little observation on its tendency, 
the fact of its extensive operation is known and acknowledged. The prohibition is not confined to express con- 
tracts, but includes such as are implied by law, from the nature of the transaction." [What well balanced mind 
would say it shoidd be otherwise !] " Any one (adds he) conversant with the usual range of State legislation, will 
at once see how small a portion of it is exempt, under this provision, from the supervision of the seven judges of 
the Supreme Court. The practice under it has been in accordance with what should have been anticipated ! 

" There are f w States in the Uni(m [for this was his drift from the first] upon whose acts (says he) the seal of 
condemnation has not, from time to time, been placed by the Supreme Court. The sovereign authorities of Ver- 
mont, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey [!] Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, 
Kentucky, and Oliio, have, in turn, been rebuked and silenced, by the overruling authority of this court." Hotp- 
ever, says he, "The authority has been given to Ihem. and this is not the place to question its exercise. But this 
I will say, that if the question of conferring it was now presented for the first time, I should unhesitatingly say, 
that the people of the Stales might, with safely, be left to their own Legislatures, and the protection of their own 
courts." 

Is there no appeal from these malignant strictures of Mr. Van Buren 1 Is there no consola- 
tion in the opinions of infinitely wiser juijges than he? If it be not fair to infer that the acqui- 
escence of those great States, whose grievances h« so ofRciousIy recounts, is proof of their sanc- 
tion of the correct judgment of the court, I would recommend the reader to turn to the able 
speech of John Marshall on the federal judiciary, delivered in the Virginia Convention, by wliith 
similar vagaries to those of Mr. Vair Buren were fully controverted, while the merits of our sys- 
tem of Government were under consideration. That able speech, indeed, was an earnest, at the 
time, of the masterly powers of mind with which the same individual was destined afterwards to 
preside over the Supreme Court. 

Mr. Van Buren also advocated the longest term for the Governor, and his eligibility to re-elec- 
tion, as esscutial, hotu, to test the good or evil of his measures, and the appi-oval or censure of 
the PEOPLE. He said, {see Holland, p. 166.) 

" He had not experienced the evils of triennial elections ; but as we had vastly increased the power of tlie Gov- 
ernor [by vesting him with ' a veto upon all laws, so far as to make their re-enaciment Viy two-thirds of both Houses 
necessary to their passage against his consent'] a strong desire is manifested to abridge his term ;" in which senti- 
menthe concurred. " But how abridge it "!" (said he.) " We wish the people to have an inmortunity of testing their 
Governor's conduct, not by the feelings of temporary exciteinent, but by tiiat sober SECCjND THOUHGT which 
IS NEVER WRONG. Can that be effected if you abridge the lemi to (>ne year 1 No, sir ! it is necessary that his pow- 
er exist long enough to survive that temporary excitement which a measure of public importance must occasion, 
and to enable the people to detect the fallacy with which the acts of Government [or their own judgment, he rather 
means] may be veiled as to their real motives. Can a fair judgment of motives or the effects of measures be made 
in a few months 1 No, sir! Even a term longer than three years must sometimes be necessary to enable us to 
judge of the eliects of measures ! ' " 

Truly, it took just three years, short by a fraction, for the seizure of ihe public Treasury, and 
the diversion of it from its customary use, under the regulations of law, to prostrate commerce 
and the general prosperity of the country ; but it may take a much shorter term, under a contin- 
uance of Mr. Van Buren's Admiiiistialioii, with the Treasury and a standing army at his com- 
mand, to drench the country in blood, and accomplitih its entire subjugation to his despotic rule. 

As long ago as 1813, when he had turned coat, and become an advocate of "strong war meas- 
ures," speaking in a public address on the re-election of Governor Tompkins, he denounced the 
detestable practice of the British in impressing American seamen into their service, in very hand- 
some terms. He said it is "a practice which can never be acquiesced in by Government, with- 
out rescinding the great article of our safety, the reciprocity o/onEniKxcK (ind photectiox be- 
tween the rulers and the ruled." But now, when the people complain that their business is 
ruined by the oppressive measures of the Government, and pray for relief, he answers "that 
the people expect too much from the Government;" "that the Government will take cars of it- 
self, and the people must take care of themselves ;" but it begins to be obvious that the gold and 
silver currency for the office-holders, and depreciated shin-plasters for the people, in lieu of our 
once uniform currency, is one of the thousand evils of his measures, which the sober seconjj 
THOCGHTS of the people will teach him at the polls in November, thkt mean no longeii -io 

ENDUKE ! 

In the same address, (see Holland, p. 101,) Mr. Van Buren, then loonninghis way to office, 
deprernted, like Gen. .fackson, what he called "the distressing truth that it was not in the pow- 



16 

cr of circu»isiances ta destroy the virulence of patty spirit." Now, when he has altained ihe 
highest command, true to tlie example of his illustrious predecessor, (whose conversion to the 
spoils system was his handiwork,) he has, like him, in order to retain power, become one of the 
most active partisans (as the author and .patron of that detestable monarchical system) in fanning 
th(! flames of " paiity sriiirr." 

In the New York Convention, (see Holland p. 198,) Mr. Van Buren said "that while he 
avowed the principle that the dominant party should always posskss and bxebcise the of- 
ficial patronage, yet he maintained due regard in its distribution should constantly be had 
for the rights of the minority." Now, if this be not an entirely incompatible sophistry, coined 
to please one party and conciliate the other, (for it is incomprehensible to me how he could give 
the exclusive official patronage to the dominant party, and yet, in its distribution, have constant 
regard to the rights of the minority, who were to have npthin'j;, unless, in his view, justice to 
them consisted in not depriving them of their civil as well as political rights ;) yet I should say, 
it affords a loop-hole through which to catch a glimpse of the "spoils doctrine" of the Albany 
Regency, when in its germ, however wonderfully it has been changed in its rugged aspect, un- 
der the revision and emendations of its author, by transplanting it to Washington, and engraft- 
ing thorny scions upon it, from the time he began in the Senate to modify and give direction to 
the patronage of the Federal Government. We all know something of the enormous growth and 
corrupt exercise of that patronage since, for the benefit of the "dominant party," and in venge- 
ance against the riglils of the minority, which has nearly shook the mokai, heligiocs, 

AND political INSTITUTIONS OF THE COUNTHY TO THEIU VOUNDATIONS. 



SECOND PERIOD. 



" His long study of the human heart, [speaking of Mr. V. B. when he entered the Senate,] his great ex- 
perience \n political matters, and his pre-eminent good sense, had given him a power of interpreting the popular 
will, and uniting, harmonizing, and directing ihefeelings of those with tchoin lie acted, which pew men ever 
ATTAIN to." IHolland's Lijfe and Political Opinions of Martin Van Buren, page 208. 



I. Mr. Van Buren, uniformly, for a series of years, has been an advocate for a tariff or im- 
posts for the protection of mantifaciures — His subsequent repudiation of his first love, us an 
overture to the South — His support and denunciation of internal improvenunt, still more di- 
versified and inconsistent — His claim of initiative legislation, alone, brings the money power 
very much within his grasp. 

When our partisan biographer, Mr. Holland, comes, in his eleventh chapter, to treat of "Mr. 
Van Buren's course in the Senate," he takes occasion to distinguish him with very high-sound- 
ing and laudatory compliments, to the great disparagement of the rest of the Senate. Without 
quoting those fulsome passages in detail, I will concede all that is meant to be assumed for Mr. 
Van Buren by his kind historian, viz : that he united, harmonized, and directed his political 
asssociates with whom he acted in the Senate, as alleged in the passage quoted above as an appro- 
priate heading for this period of his career, particularly as his biographer seems iimch enamored 
with it, desirous to make deep impression of its truth, from his frequent repetition of it in differ- 
ent parts of his book. It will, therefore, be perfectly fair to hold this boasted party manager re- 
sponsible for that '■^direction" which he gave to those with whom he " acted" in the Senate, 
in certain important doings of theirs, as well as what he enacted on his own hook, during that 
important period, which his biographer found it convenient to say nothing about, touching his 
overtures to the South ; though he professes that " nothing has been intentionally omitted, glossed 
over, or unfairly represented" — an expression which he also takes pains to reiterate in sundry 
other places in his book, protesting that he "has made strenuous endeavors not to conceal or 
raibrepresent" any material fact or opinion. After adding a further eulogy in disparaging the 
rest of the Senate, saying that, " to furnish a complete view of Mr. V. B.'s services in the Sen- 
ate of the United States, during the seven years he was a member, (from 1821 to 1829,) would 
be to transcribe a large pi)rtion of its proceedings," he goes on to give a meagre summary of 
his acts and doings on most of the prominent subjects of legislation of that period, with an omis- 
sion, nevertheless, of the principal features of some of them, which I will supply from other au- 
thority. He also distorts some of those transactions, and glosses them over, as we have seen he 
did, in many instances, in the preceding period, before he came to the Senate. I shall take the 
liberty of correcting these, as I have done those. 

The Federal Government and the State Governments, taken together, constitute the elements 
of a whole and^er/ec/ sovereignty. The States, individually, are imperfect sovereignties, so 
far as the powers delegated to the Federal Government abate or curtail their former complete sov- 
ereignty. The Federal Government is also nn imperfect sovereignty, so far as the powers not 



17 

Oelegateil to it, but reserved to (he States respectively, ate wanting to make that sovereignty com- 
plete. The sovereignty of the Federal Government is complete in all things that appertain to 
foreign relations, and to the internal commerce between the States. There are many minor sub- 
jects of legislation on internal police, not connected in any manner with foreign relations, or with 
the relations between States, between States and citizens of States, and between citizens of dif- 
ferent States, which come within the sphere of join f, iriterferi7ig, o\ participating sovereignties 
of the Federal and the State Governments. And I doubt whether there he any subject of legis- 
lation in which a State has exclusive sovereignty", in regard to the United States authority, inas- 
much as the whole range of State legislvition is subject to the supervision of the Federal Govern- 
ment, through the Supreme Court, so far as any infraction of any of the delegated powers of the 
federal constitution may be involved in such legislation. These ge; eral hints are thrown out 
here, to hring the contemplative mind to some focal points involved in the sequel. And, for the 
same purpose, it may be well to hear in mind that the federal constitution consists of three prin- 
cipal AUTic'LBS, besides several others that are miscellaneous. The first relates to the Legisla- 
ture; the second relates to the Executive; and the third to the Judiciary — each comprising mat- 
ters more or less enhancing or restricting the powers and duties of the others. In the eighth sec- 
tion of the first article, the specific powers delegated to the legislature arc enumerated in 
fighteen clauses, of which I copy the three first and the eighteenth, viz: 

" The Concrpss sliall have power— 

"1. To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, [vulgarly called taritfj and excises, to pay the delits and provide for 
the common defence and general welfare of the United Slates ; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform 
throughout the United States. 

" 2. To borrow money on the credit of the United States. 

'■ 3. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several Stales, and wiili the Indian tribes." 

"18. To make all laws which shall be neces.sary and proper for carrying into execution the foreeoing powers 
and all other powers vested by this constitution in ihe Government of ihe^niled Stales, or in any department or 
officer thereof" 

Under this eighteenth clause, the reader perceives that Congress has the power, as effectually 
granted, though not by name, tie make whatever laws it shall deem necessary and proper to ex- 
ecute any other power, as that power itself was conferred ; and that any measure, for that pur- 
pose, which one Congress may deem necessary and proptr to-day, may at another time, under 
change of circumstances, be deemed unnecessary or inexpedient to the end desired. ' 

From the earliest moments of legislation under the constitution to the present day. Congress 
has found it "necessary and proper," by the concurrent votes of all parlies, in order to "regu- 
late commerce" and "to provide for the common defence and general welfare," not only to lay 
imposts (or tariff) ybr revenue, but \.o protect the manufactures that might minister to the" com- 
mon defence and general prosperity ;" and not only to protect such manufactures, but to construct 
forts, arsenals, military ways, and whatever else they might deem necessary to the "common 
defence," &c.; also such harbors, canals, roads, &c., as Congress may deem necessary and proper 
for the general commerce, or commerce between the Slates, &c., paying due deference, as a 
matter of expediency and decorum, to the wishes of the States most immediately concerned ; so 
that the difficulty consists not so much in the right to act as the discretion in acting. Whether 
politicians may, to-day, admit these plain truths, and to-morrow deny them, and still claim 
credit for consistency, is another matter. For a masterly exposition of this whole subject in all 
its bearings, I would refer the reader to the refutation of the " views" of the Richmond Enquirer, 
by the Editors of the National Intelligencer, in a series of essays through the months of June, 
July, and August. 

On the subject of the tauiff, as long ago as the 30th January, 1817, resolutions were adopt- 
ed in the New York Legislature, mninly by the influence of Mr. Van Buren, and " the domi- 
nant party" to which he was attached, "instructing their Senators and requesting their Repre- 
sentatives in Congress, to use t'aeir influence to obtain efficient protection for the infant manu- 
factures of the United States," &c. And by these resolutions Mr. Van Buren and his friends 
laid the foundation of that very tariff, of which his present Southern supporters have ever since 
complained. — {See New York Senate Journal, pages 52, 78, as quoted by the New York 
Times,- but entirely omitted by Holland.) 

He voted in the Senate of the United States for the tariff of 1824, without hesitation, scruple, 
or instructions. (This is admitted, but glossed over by Holland, page 27.').) 

On the 2.5lh February, 1837, he voted in the Senate of the United States against reducing the 
lax on salt; which, in the opinion of the salt champion of Missouri, is the most objectionable 
item of a higli tariff. — (See Senate Journal 1827; but omitted by Holland.) 

.\\. the same session, however, Mr. Van Buren began to qunil on the general tariff, as we 
learn from Holland, (page 27?',) who says: " At a public meeting held in Albany on the 10th 
July, 1827, Mr. Van Buren delivered a speech of considerable length and great ingenuity,'^ in 
which he examined "the tariff bill, v/hich passed the House of Representatives in 1827, but was 
laid on the table in the Senate — he concurring of course. In the course of his speech (says he) 
Mr. Van Buren intimates his serious fears, that the friends of protective dfities were urging 
their measurs with too much eagerness. He also cautions manufa ctuhehs against uniting their 
fortunes with ^ny political adventurer " a home hit, this, that will tell at the rebound of the 
9 



18 

Ai^ie;- SECOND rHOvuHTS of t/'tc people ill November next. This was his " sheep speech," so 
famous for favoring contradictory opinions. 

In the Spring of the same year, 1827, when Mr. Van Buren, accompanied by Mr. Cambrel- 
eng, was making a tour llirough the South, on an atTectcd pilgrimage to Mr. Crawford, but in 
fact with sundry political speculations in view, such as ascertaining, by authority, from Mr. 
(Crawford, the enemy of Mr. Calhoun, something which might at a future time be used to sup- 
plant Mr. Calhoun in the affections of General Jackson, and at the same time to make such 
overtures to the South, as might serve his own turn, in case General Jackson should not be taken 
up by the South to supersede Mr. Adams, he did, in replies to invitations to public entertain- 
ments, resort to similar misgivings with those above referred to ; and, particularly, in his answer 
to an invitation by the citizens of Raleigh, he denounced those acts of federal legislation, upon 
what he called constructive rights, meaning the tariff and internal improvoiienfs, which had 
been frequently and earnestly advocated by both himself and his travelling companion Mr. Cam- 
breleng. Seizing the opportunity of railing at the administration for what he had so frequently 
aided in doing, as national measures, he said : 

" All dispassionate observers will admit that the nipasures (of the administration) to which you allude, justify the 
alarm you express. The spirit of encroachment has assumed a new and far more seductive aspect, and can only be 
resisted by the exercise of uncommon virtue." 

That this offering to the South, was propitious, is apparent from the Columbian Telescope, 
ol South Carolina, proclaiming at the time, that " Mr. Van Buren is not unlikely to succeed 
General Jackson, if he keeps steadily to his present plan.'" (See the Political Mirror, pages 
41, 42/ and chupter " liniv to dispose of a rival,'' page 124.) These important passages in 
Mr Van Buren's magical life, are not even alluded to by his biographer, Holland. 

But Mr. Van Buren rallied again, in the next twelve months, and "votkd for the 'i'ahiff 
OF 1828," whicli provoked the most serious commotion that ever threatened the peace and in- 
tegrity of the Union, in the South, headed by Mr. Calhoun and his nullifying friends. This is 
admitted by Holland (page 298) to be true, notwithstanding the speech of 1827, above quoted. 

Mr. Van Buren was also the coadjutor and adviser of the author of the proclamation and the 
force bill, the natural offsprings of the above tariff. He was Vice President, resident at Wash- 
ington, at the time those exciting measures took j-dace ; Mr. Livingston, the author of them, 
and a native of New York, having been appointed Secretary of State by the recommendation of 
Mr. Van Buren, at the di-ssolulion of the cabinet in 1831, those measures must have been sub- 
mitted to his advisement, and received his entire approbation, upon every principle of reciprocal 
praises and obligations between him and General Jackson — though the objectionable parts of the 
proclamation were afterwards explained away by General Jackson, at the instance of his political 
high priest and confessor at Richmond, doubtless, also, with the approbation of Mr. Van Buren, 
in order to conciliate Mr. Kilthie and the South. 

With regard to istkun.4.i. impiiovkjif.sts, (the handmaid of the protective tariff, so far as 
the one encourages the home production of the muniments of war, &c., and the other affords the 
facilities of making them efficient, transporting them from place to place, «&c., not otherwise 
sufficienlly provided,) we have already seen that Mr. Van Buren was for a long time opposed 
to Clinton's plan of State improvements; we shall now see how he vacillated on this subject in 
regard to \,\\c policy and powers of the Federal Government. 

[n the Senate of the United States, in may 1822, he voted for the preservation and repairs of 
the Cumberland road, and for establishing United States' toll-gates on that road, in the Stales 
through which it passes ; with other such latitudinous provisions, that caused .Mr. .Monroe to 
veto the bill. (This is indirectly achnowkdged by Holland, yiagc 271.) 

In 1823, Mr. Van Buren voted, in the Senate, for provisions simihir to the above, in 
relation to the preservation, repairs, and continuance of the Cumberland road. This and 
the preceding facts are indirectly acknowledged, and more than half suppressed by Holland. 
T!ie only notice he takes of these votes is, in an extract from a speech of Mr. Van Buren 
on Foote's resolution, several years thereafter, in which he adverts to his votes on the Cum- 
berland road, and says, "it is by no means certain that, in this respect, he himself has been 
allogether viWaoni fault." Certain circumstances "had induced him, loithout full excurhination, 
to vote for a jirovision authorizing the collection of toll on this road. 1'he afl'air (says he) of 
the Cumberland road, in respect to its reference to the constitutional powers of this Government, 
/.s matter entirely sui oenkuis!" A case, sui generis, in regard to its constitutionality! ! I 
will venture to o])ine, without any hazard of mistake, that there is not anollw^r man, B. F. Butler 
excepted, the compeer of Mr. Van Buren, into whose mind the conception ever could have en- 
tered to fabricate such an unique prevarication and fulsr pretence, to excuse an act which, had 
it not licen his own, he would have pronounced, according to his then existing political cue, to 
be unconstitutional. To start a doctrine that any case tvhatever can come up in the whole 
range of legislation, that can entirely evade the question of constitutional power over it, on ac- 
count of any peculiarity that may be set up for it, is so absurd and unstatesmanly, that the pre- 
sumption with which it is advanced can only be accounted for in this instance by the long prac- 
tice and unparalleled success of Mr. Van Buren in the arts of deception and counterfeiting the 



19 

similitude oJ trutli. My reason lor making the above exception in behalf of Mr. Butler is, lie- 
cause that gentleman has demonstrated his tact in the same sort of literary anomaly while he wa« 
Attorney General — though I presume he had acquired "some (more) acquaintance with Latin" 
than Mr. Van Buren had. In the fall of 1836, when the Secretaryship of War was about to 
be vacated by Mr. Secretary Cass accepting tlie embassy to f'rance, Mr. Butler desired the situ- 
ation and salary without vacating that of Attorney General, notwithstanding the incompatibil- 
ity of the relation he would then stand in, as legal adviser (in quality of Attorney General) to 
himself, (in quality of Secretary of War,) — for this would be an advantage to him in all his 
official perplexities as Secretary of War, as he would be sure, upon consultation, to have tho 
opinion of the law officer on his side ; and, if the question should be raised as to his right to 
hold two offices, or to draw two salaries, under the constitution and the law, his opinion, in the 
capacity of Attorney General, might be decisive with the Secretary of the Treasury — particular- 
ly if he could do away a palpable solecism by legal logic, or the hocus pocus of his legal reputation, 
and make it appear that his second office was no office, but a nondescript sui generis case of ser- 
vice, and that he was entitled to the exact equivalent of the salary, for extra services, (the stand- 
ing sui generis for all impostures of the kind.) Accordingly, he did arrange the thing exactly 
in the exquisite Van Buren style of legal quibble, and succeeded in befooling General Jackson 
and the Secretary of the Treasury, secundum artem. He styled himself "Secretary of War, 
ad interim," and so signed his name to all official papers while he was acting in this double 
capacity, about a year, cheating the country, and giving a shock to the common sense of every 
man who cast his eyes on so novel a title, unknown to the laws or the constitution. 

" On the 22d January, 1824, Mr. Van Buren called the attention of the Senate to the alarm- 
ing assumption of power by the General Government, in regard to ' internal improvements.' "— 
{See Holland, page 267.) "On the 19th of December, 1825, he again brought forward the 
same subject, and offered two resolutions, one of which declaied ' that Congress does not pos- 
sess the power to make ro.<ids and canals within the respective States.' " {See ditto.) " On the 
21st April (same year) he opposed the appropriation for the Louisville canal." {Ditto, page 
269.) And, on the 15th May following, he opposed the proposition to subscribe, on the part 
of the United States, to the Dismal Swamp Canal, conne(-ting the navigable waters of Virginia 
and North Carolina. On the last but one of these occasions, Mr. Van Buren said : 

" The aid nf this Government can only be aflfurdod to these objpcts of improvement, in three ways : by making 
a road or canal and assuming jurisdiction ; by making a road or canal with'iut assuming jurisdiction, leaving it to 
the States ; or by making an appropriation without doing either. In his opinion, the General Government had no 
right to do either." 

The reader has now before him two remarkable instances of Mr. Van Buren's oscillations from 
the extreniest constitutional constructiveness, without the posssibility of his having entertained a 
sincere belief in the "necessity" or propriety of collecting tolls by the United States on the 
('umberland road, to the extremest respectiveness to the letter of the constitution, equally ira- 
[Mobable of belief to justify him, in denying the power of the General Government to aid a State 
improvement by appropriation or loan. Mr. Van Buren, who commenced tiie study of law at 
fourteen, after a lapse of about thirty years' devotion to nothing else but law and politics, was 
yet so ignorant of the constitution in 1822, as to believe that the United States had constitutional 
power to coNSTaccT a road, {sui generis, be it remembered) assume jurisdictiox, and col- 
lect TOLLS, within the States!! But as soon as he finds it politic to make overtures to the 
South, and take lectures from professor Ritchie on his beati ideal of a " Northern man with 
Southern feelings," he is ready to take his diploma up'in such restrictive construction (being no 
construction at all) as would render nearly the whole code of our laws unconstitutional, because 
they are not in accordance with its lkttek ! ! an absurdity, which needs only to be stated, to 
be fully appreciated, thus, viz : that if every law must conform to the letter of the constitution, 
that is, have a literal provision for it in the instrument, it would require that the constitution 
should anticipate and embrace, in advance, the whole legal code; and that whatever law be not 
therein literally embraced, shall be considered unconstitutional, which is absurd. It results, 
then, from this argumentum ad absurdum, that the "necessarily" implied powers are infin- 
itely more numerous than those powers expressly enumerated ; as each of these must carry vvith 
it a train of correlative powers that may be deemed by Congress "necessary and proper' from 
time lo time, to carry it into execution. 

So that, while I must agree that, according to the example of most of our illustrious statesmen 
before he began to strut his brief hour on the stage, his advocacy of protective imposts and internal 
improvements would have constituted some claim for Mr. Van Buren's taking rank in that galaxy of 
brilliant names, I must be permitted, nevertheless, to say, that all his seeming merit therein, has 
proved to be nothing but the frothy declamation of a political speculator, from the time he trafficked 
away his consistency, by time serving overtures to Mr. Ritchie for " Southern influence, to pro- 
mote his ambition." Mr. Ritchie well knows that Mr. Jefferson was not ordy an advocate of a 
tariflfor imposts for the protection and encouragement of " our infant manufactures, suited to our 
circumstances," but of internal improvements, by the Federal Government appjying any surplus 
of revenue from imposts, to the construction of roads, canals, &c., as expressed in many of his 



20 

messages to Congress, down to his very last annual. Such, also, does he know were the senti- 
ments of Mr. Madison, Mr. Monroe, and even of General Jackson, [with the exception of some 
unintelligible distinctions and inconsistences in the latter part of his administration, which he 
must have derived from Mr. Van Buren, through the pron)ptings of his preceptor at Richmond.] 
Yet Mr. Ritchie has pertinaciously striven, against public opinion and the established policy of 
the nation from its birth, to establish a Tom Ritchie school oi- politics denouncing all inipU- 
n(J potvers; for the adoption of Vire;inia and the whole South, which has had a greater tendency to 
undermine the Union, than Mr. Calhoun's mad career and all his nullifying friends put together, 
inasmuch as his is but an infection from the 'J'om Ritchie hiaxia. But it would be rational to 
suppose that Mr. Van Burcn's former zeal for a "protective tavifl"" and "internal improve- 
ments" would have been sufficient to have excluded him from the Tom Rifcliie school, if Mr. 
Ritchie were the man whose political consistency, propriety, directness and good faith, on other 
occasions, would entitle him to be counted upon. Not so, however; for it has been a favorite arti- 
fice of Mr. Ritchie to lay low, and await the signs of the popular current, and in the mean time, to 
coax eminent men to modify, explain away, and annul their former opinions, so as to enable 
him to claim them to be of his way of thinking on the favorite doctrine of his school, for which 
he barters his pretended influence over Virginia politics, which is sure to seem considerable when 
tiie ebb makes in his direction. The recent case in which Mr. Ritchie has seduced Mr. Poinsett 
and Mr. Van Buren seriously to implicate their own veracity before the American people on the 
subject of the standing army of 200,000 men attempted by them to be imposed upon the coun- 
try under the disguise of a militia regulation, is yet perhaps the most remarkable instance of thi.s 
sort of political jirostitution in the Tom Ritchie calendar. 

Let no one suppose that I have charged this billing and cooing, this trafficking between Mr. 
Ritchie and Mr. Van Buren, unadvisedly. Without going into the details of the political inter- 
course that commenced between them, on Mr. V. B.'s visit to the South in 1827, which has 
probably been unremitting ever since, embracing sundry other personal visits of Mr. \'. B. to 
Mr. Ritchie during the Virginia convention in 1830, and since he has been I'resident, with the 
long visit of Mr. Ritchie at Washington during his inauguration, I will content myself by put- 
ting together a few facts that have already been made public, independent of what I am confident 
could be ])roved, by a committee of investigation authorized to send for persons and papers, 
showing tlie corrupt and clandestine influences used to swerve the President from the settled 
policy of the country, and particularly that the declaration of Mr. V. B.'s biographer is as true in 
this, as in other cases, viz: that "he unites, harmonizes, and directs, all with whom he acts," &c. 

Holland, .speaking on tlie subject of internal improvements, ^. 271, says: "The course of 
General Jackson's administration has done much to throw light upon this subject, especially his 
famous veto messurre upon the Maysvillc road bill. Mr. Van Buren icas then a member of his 
cabinet, and, to use his men language, ' gave to the measure of which that document was an 
exposition, his active, zealous, and anxioi's suppoht." He then quotes trom an electioneer- 
ing letter of Mr. Van Buren, addresse^l to a committee at Shocco Springs, N. C. in October 
1832, while he was candidate for the Vice Presidency, and afterwards remarks upon them thus: 
"These extract.^, it will be noticed, go far/hrr than the iwto message upon the Maysville road 
bill, and assume the ground aftehwauds adopted by the Presidtnf, that evex for rcitrosES 
WHICH MIGHT BE DEKMEii OF A NATIONAL ciiAHACTEU. WO appropriations ouglit to bc made 
without a previous amendment of the. constifution .' .' ' I ask, is it not now palpable, from 
this gradual progress of Mr. Van Buren from the extreme doctrine of " collecting tolls on the 
Cumberland road," to the opposite extreme of demanding "an amendment of the constitution 
to authorize an appropriation for avowed national objects," (the identical doctrine of the Tom 
Ititchie school,) and the consequent, progressive, corresponding changes in General Jackson's 
views of that subject, and of his "reasonable tarifl','' that there existed a corrupt coalition for 
political efTect against the known will of the country, by which the Tom Ritchie doctrine was 
to find favor and support in Mr. Van Buren, and then, through his "clandestine influence over 
General Jackson," was to become the court doctrine of his administration 1 

But lest these should bc deemed insufficient to satisfy those whose affections, or rather delu- 
sions, are so strong thai they do not wish to bc undeceived, I will quote an extract from the 
Richmond Enquirer of 25th June, 1830, which if it does not show under whose influence the 
President vetoe 1 the Maysvillc road bill, it atVords further j)roof at least, of that pervasive influ- 
ence by which .Mr. Van Buren " unites, harmonizes, and directs, all vv'ith whom he acts" — as 
the letter was written by one of his most zealous political friends, and perhaps one of the most 
effective in procuring the success of his recent elevations to the highest offices of the country. 
The letter was {from Washington,) dated 18th June, 1830 — 

" The opposilijn, when the President put his veto upon tlie Maysville road bill, calculated with great certainty 
ihat Pennsylvani:! (in sportsman's phrase) would bo!l. Indeed, some of our own friends gave evideiu symptoms ot 
alarm, and' thousht all was lost. However, the thins has gone forth, in as hideous a dress, too, as the opposition 
pr-ss could characterize it, withal ; and, to their astonishnient, that Stale still stands firm, and has not yet shut 
inadly from her sphere. She siill holds the front rank, and is No. 1 . We have 1 leen most agreeably disai >(iointed. 
The aemocracv of that democratic State, have taken a correct view of the subject of internal improvemenls, and 
will firmly sustain the President in the course he has taken. I have lately received several letters trom gentlemen 
living in that Slate which evince a degree of unanimity, not to have been expectsd by the most sanguine of our 



21 

friRnd.-','' itc. &,c. '■ 1 liave no tears of Peims.vlv;uiia. I never can believn, wUatiM-ftr iiuiy be her ('(unions as 
respects the conslilutionality of Uio question, liiat she will consent to be taxed to make roads and canals in other 
Slates, after having spent not less than twenty millions of dollars in makinc her own roads and canals. Situated 
as she is, il wouUfbe intinilely preferable, I shouM think, (if improvements are to be niiide at the expense of the 
Federal Government) to have the surplus revenue divided among the States, as proposed by the President accord- 
ngl I their respective reprcsentulions in Confess, &c. DE WIT CLINTON." 

" The foresoins reflections are so just, in the alisiract , that they are as applicable to New York as to Pennsylvaniii. 
and the fact that those two great States have none so extensively into internal improvements at their own expense, 
is a presumptive evidence that lliey did not (ormerly consider it rdiistiiutional even to vote for appropriations from 
the General Government for those objects, l\:c. They are llu'n doubly bound to act wiih Virsinia and the South, 
botli on the obligations of consistency and inlrrost."' 

[By the way, I rannot uive that oorrupl eoiilitimi any of llic credit tliey would at;.'<uine to 
themselves, iti the matter of giving a home direction to Slate inipruvt/iienls, as it is obvious that 
the mjiidity of the deinaTid for imjiroveinent would not permit the State authorities to wait the 
slow motion of fedci-al aid, and that the hostility, of ihe parly in power, to improvement, o?j 
any terms, is fully demonstrated by their attempt to disgrace the credit of the States abroad, in 
the very necessary matter of negotiating funds for those objects, by raib.ing a hubbub in the Sen- 
ate about assuming State debts, without a hint or request to do so.] 

Were it necessary, I could easily show that these narrow-minded and unslalesmanly doctrine.-i 
of Mr. Van Buren, derived from the Tom Ritchie school, are not in accordance with the settled 
policy and practice of the country. Independent of the splendid instances of internal improve- 
ment, and improvement in our infant manufactures, affording commercial facilities and profits to 
productive labor through our vast extent of country, eliectcd by opjiropriation.s and fostering ;j?-o- 
tect'ion of Congress, the sim[)le fact, that there are standing comtnittees of Congress, "on Internal 
Improvements," and "on Roads and Canals," and "on Manufactures," is alone sutricient to show 
that these are among the powers or means deemed " necessary and proper" to cany specific powers 
into execution. But these implied powers are not only the results of the aggregate counsels of 
the nation : even Virginia herself, never was, in her collective sense, as a State, nor in the 
individual opinions of the great majority of her wisest statesmen, opposed to the exercise of these 
powers, as necessarily implied by the specific powers. The petitions that have been presented 
to Congress from time to time, from all quarters of the State, praying the aid of Congress in 
her internal improvements, might alone be considered conclusive on this subject. I will select a 
few of those petitions, by their titles, presented from the remotest parts of the State, during the 
earlier part of General Jackson's administration, before he adopted Mr. Van Burcii's fostered 
doctrine of the Tom Ritchie school, but which Virginia has not yet adopted, and I believe never 
wilJ. 

"Petition of the President and Directors of tlie Northern Turnpike Company in the State of Vire-inia, for the con- 
slructiou of a road from Leesburg in Virginia to Cumberland in Maryland, praying for a suljscription of their stock 
by the Government of the United States ; which petition was referred to the Conimitlee on Roads and Canals."—- 
House Journal for the session l82.S-'"29. 

" Petition of inhabiiants of Harper's Ferry and its vicinity, in the State of Virginia, praying Coneress to grant to 
a company incorporated for the purpose of erecting a bridge over the river Shenandoah, grounds sufficient for the. 
abutments of said bridge ; as also for a grant of moiiey to atd in the erection of said bridge."— House Journal, session 
lS29-'3(-». 

'• Petition of inhabitants of the town of Wheeling, in the State of Virginia, praying that efTicienl measures may be 
promptly ad'nued for ilie improvement of the navigation of the river t)hio, from, its -ources, to Lruisville, in Ken- 
tucky; which petiiion was referred to the Committee on Internal Improvements."— Session 1830- '31. 

" Petition of sundry citizens of Richmond, (in Virainia,) praying tliat an adequate a|iiiropriation may be made to 
remove ilie olislriictions to navigation in Jamer River, between the port of Kichmond and Burwell's Ijay ; wliich 
was referred to the Conimiltee on Commerce "—House Journal, 1831-'.32. 

It is also a remarkable fact that the last of the above-named petitions came from the city of 
Mr. Ritchie's adoption, signed by many of Mr. Ritchie's warmest political and personal fiends, 
wa.s the result of several public meetings held on the subject, and was forwarded to Congress, 
without any protest from Mr. Ritchie against it. Away, then, with the senseless pretences, that 
a protective tariff and internal improvements are incompatible with the Virginia creed, and are 
not within the province of Congress, whenever that body deems them necessary and proper, as 
the means of executing powers specifically enumerated. 



II. Mr. Van Burcn'x inronsibtenci/ respecting the constituliunality of a Bunk of ihe United 
States: His combined safety bank system in New York, for political purposes : Failure of 
his attempt to seduce or intimidate the United States Bank to the embraces of Executive dictu- 
fion — us a substitute for which he introduces his New York system, by combining State bunks, 
us drpositorics of the Treasury, under Executive control: Explosion of the system occasions 
a resort to a stih-Trecnury bank, in order to accomplish the original design of usurping, con- 
centrating, and mono])olizing the money power. 

It is generally thought that, by constitutional right. Congress wields the .moxki ivowkii as a 
balance to the Executive power over the sword. But, when it is considered that Mr. Van Bu- 
ren claims the "initiative" as well as the "final" legislation — the initiative by virtue of his au- 
thority to recommend measures of legislation, the faial by virtue of his power to veto all bills — 
will not the reader perceive that the purse or money power is brought very much within his 
grasp; and that it is of vast importance to wrest these gigantic initiative and final powers from a 
man whose principles set .so loosely upon him, that they flit about and change front with every 



22 

political breeze thnt blown 1 TJndei any circumstance.-;, these are dangerous powers in the hands 
of a bad man ; but, being in such hands, with a corrupt insijority of the legislature composed ol 
his own partisans, supplicating his patronage and executive favor, is at once equivalent to an ab- 
solute surrender not only of the money power, but the whole {)ovver of legislation. 

This brings me prematurely to a remark upon the great "spoils system," of which Mr. Van 
Buren is the author, as it originated in his own State, and perftcier, as it is now practised in 
the Federal Goverinncnt. But, from the dcrinition I would give of that system, it will he per- 
ceived that this sort of corrupt Executive influence over legislation constitutes a part of that sys- 
tem, and therefore a brief definition of it will not be entirely out of place here, tiiough more 
properly coming in connexion with an exposition of the abuses of Executive patronage (properly 
so called) introduced into the General Government by Mr. Van Buren's clandestine influence 
over Gen. Jackson. 

The most lucid conception that can be formed of this "spoils system" mriy be that which di- 
vides it into three great branches, as follows : 

'The first I would denominate the direct "spoils of office," or of offices actually existing — this 
branch being assumed to be under the direct control of the Executive as his right of pathoxaok. 

The second I would term the indirect " spoils of office," or of offices not actually existing, but 
in prospective, to be brought ultimately into the s))here of the direct spoils office, by the Presi- 
dent's initiative power of legislation operating ujioii a venal legislature. 

The third I would designate as the indirect "spoils of business" in general, consisting of un- 
equal benefits to portions of the community at the cost of other portions, to be brought about 
by the President's initiative power of legislation operating upon a verbal legislature. 

That legislation, so materially in the hands of the Executive, as I have shown the federal le- 
gislation may be, under the circumstances stated, should, in all instances that aflij'ct large ap- 
propriations and establishment ui new offices, in which the President either indicates the section 
of country on which such appro[)riations may be expended, or has the appointment of ofiiccrs that 
may be required, and the disposal of all other matters connected with the initiation and the ex- 
ecution of such laws, coNSTiTUTK a part of the great "spoils .system" must be manifest notwith- 
standing the novelty of the definition. Also, that other legislation, likewise materially in the 
hands of the President, as above supposed, which aflects unequally the business operations of 
(liflferent portions of the community, some for better some lor worse, according to their party as- 
pect, sHouLP, in like manner, constitute a branch of the great "spoils system" is equally evi- 
dent. These two branches of that system, however, cannot be reduced to such certain calcula- 
tion of vicious and venal motives, as that of the direct "spoils of office," actually existing — to 
which, by a great mistake, the spoils system has generally been supposed to be confined. The 
"spoils system," then, embraces the whole money power, direct or indirect, so far as the Pres- 
tde?if may, by his own act, directly or indirectly bring the control of it within his own 

ffRASr. 

After a protective tariflfand internal improvements, the next most striking example of the im- 
plied pn wEiis of Congress, is, that of incorporating a Bank of the United States, for the purpose. 
of carrying into execution one or more of the rpkcifikd poweks, such as " to facilitate pe- 
cuniary loans" upon emergency, " to aid in the fiscal agency of the Government," and "in es- 
tablishing or mnitnaining a uniform currency," among other, incidental, benefits that would ne- 
cessarily accrue to agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and othermatters of business, promotive 
of the common good, or "the general welfare" of a sovereign people.* 

It is in thia field of implied powers that nearly the whole of the legislative labors are necessa- 
rily exercised in all constitutional Governments, as I have already endeavored to show. And it 
is in this field that systems may be attempted by conflicting parties, party compromises and co- 
alitions, or even liy the concurrent patriotic zeal of all parties, which, if pushed to extremes, may- 
threaten, and imminently jeopard the common good, in violation of that salutary restriction, 
requiring that the exercise of such powers shall lie in accordance with "the common de- 
fence and THE genehal welfare" — [a phrase, by the way, which has been so vilified, for 
party effect, as to render it a prejudice against a measure, to say that it is called for or rendered 
" necessary and proper," by " the general icelfare," in " executing a specified power."] Such 
abuses were apprehemlcd to be tiie tendency of those branches of the great American system, 
just passed under review in the foregoing section — whether from just cause or from the excite- 
ment of strong party prejudices ; and, therefore, a jealous people, yielding to the dictates of pru- 



♦ Since writing the above, iVnni rocoUeclioii, not having ihe acl of incorporation bufure me, I am enabled tn sub 
join, by way of noie, from an able editorial article in the National Intelligencer, of the 27th August current, tho 
preamble lo theact nf inLMi-pdraiii.ii of the Bank of the United States, to wlilch Washington affixed hi.s approval as 
President of tlie Uniled Siat'-s on the -J.-ith February, 17'.ll : 

"Whereas it is cimreived that tiie eslalilishmeni of a Batik of the United States upon a foundation sulficiently 
extensive to answer tiie purposes intendeil thereby, and. at tlie saiuR time, upon the principles which atlord ade- 
quate security fui an upright and prudent administration thereof, will be very conducive to tlrio successful conduct- 
ing of the national finances; will tend to cive facility to the obtaining of loans for the use of the Government in 
sudden emergencifK: and will be productive of ronpideinl)U advantages to trade and iiuluslrv in !;eneral : There- 
fore," Sec. 



dential motives, arrested or abated their progress, by counter indications to their Representa- 
tives ; and the enterprise of the Wtates has well substituted a part of it by their own exertions, in 
the exercise of their co-ordinate power, to meet their own calls for internal improvements with- 
in their respective limits. 

The fixedness of infernal improvements, to the local objects, rendered it practicable for the 
co-ordinale power of the State, and the Federal Government, in this particular, (as in all other 
cases of co-ordinate powers,) to be operative without interference or collision ; and, therefore, 
the right of internal improvement was not exclusively granted, or prohibited, to the Federal Gov- 
ernment, but was left to be exercised (co-ordinately) among the implied powers, " necessary and 
proper," in the estimation of Congress, to execute other powers specifically granted, "lor the 
conmion defence and general welfare." But the mercurial character of commercial intercourse 
renders it impossible for any Stale to protect her own manufactures by countervailing commercial 
regulations, that would not be liable to aliecl, injuriously, the manufacturing and other interests 
of other States ; and, therefore, the specific power "toregu'ate commerce," was given up by 
the States, and exclusively conferred on the Federal Government, with \\\e general power over 
all measures that might be deemed by Congress to be necessarily and properly incident thereto. 

To incorporate a bank of the United States, I have said, was one of the implied powers found 
to be necessary and proper to carry intu execution one or more of the specified powers. Of the va- 
lidity and soundness of that decision, made in the earliest days of the constitution, by men, too, 
who had taken the greatest part in its formation and adoptifui, we have the corroborating opin- 
ions of many of the most eminent statesmen of the democratic repuhlicon pariy of Virginia, as 
well as the rest of the Union, at the time it was first adopted ; and the same decision, vvilh the 
judicial confirmation of the Supreme Court, has ever since been steadily maintained, with an in- 
creased majority of the republican party,* up to the present time, cmbnicing the very period of the 
late DF.sTuucTiox of the second bank that had been established and based on that decision. 
And this same bank would have been rechartered by a large majority of all ])arties in both Houses 
of Congress, in the high party times of Jackson's administration, but for his v>:ro, which re- 
quired two-thirds of both Houses to pass the bill in defiance of his persi^ial hostility. Yet, neither 
the VETO, nor the outrage of removing the public deposites from the bank to insure its ukstuuc- 
Tiox, and thereby prevent a renewal of the efibits of Congress to recharter the same bank, were 
perpetrated on account of any constitutional objections to a national bank of a particular organi- 
zation (a Ticgsury bank) to suit the views of the Executive. For, besides the evidences of an 
opinion favorable to the constitutionality of a national bank occurring in nearly every message of 
General Jackson during his first term, there is, in the very draft of his instructions to the agent 
authorized in 1833 to make arrangements for the removal of the deposites to State banks, j)repar- 
atory to the destruction of the United States Bank by drawing ofYtlie vital principle infused into 
it by Congress at its creation, a recognition of the constitutionality of a bank. Of the various 
modes of expression by which General Jackson declared his opinion in favor of the constitution- 
ality of a national bank, I take the following remarkable one from his message of December 7, 
1830, with which he connects an acknowledgment, also, of the benefits of such an institution 
to the country : 

" In thfi S|iirit of improvement luul roinproniisc wiiich tlistiiisuishes our country and its inslitulions, il becomrs ug 
to inquire vvhethpr il be not possililf in secure the advantages at^niiled by the presnnt liank, through the agency of 
a bank of llie United States, so modified in its princijilps and structure as to obviate constitutional and other ob- 
jections." 

The passage in Gen. Jackson's instructions to the agent, above adverted to, runs thus: 

" It is the opinion uf llie President, that hereafter as heretofore, bank agency will Ijo found convenient, in man- 
asing the fiscal operations of ths GoverLinient, and as he cannot, cousisienily with his avowed sentiments, sanc- 
tion any national institutiou orirniiizod up.m the pi-inciples of the existing Bank of the United States, he deems it 
proper 'to ascertain whether all the services now rendered by it, may not Ijp performed by the banks incorporated 
by tjie several States, on tenos equally or more favorable to Govenuiienl." 

This was substituted, by order of the President, for a paragraph in the original dratt of instruc- 
tions made out by the Secretary of the Treasury, in which General Jackson was supposed to be 
adverse to the constitutionality of a bank, and the substitute was made solely to correct that mis- 
apprehension, as we are informed by the authentic narrative of Mr. Diisnc. — (<Sfe p^gt 91 of 
said " Narrative.") 

The reader is now prcpar. d to appreciate the beating of these facts, in connexion with others 



* It might be acceptable to many were I to mention here the names and arguments of the eannent men chnm- 
icledinour political and legislative history, as beins original and acquiescing advo'-ates of this pnwer; out f'r 
want of space and time imist foreso those details. It would be seen that sucli a list would not only c mmence wuh 
the name and clear reaso:iin£ of Washineton, and embrace every other Virginia President, Jdierson, Madison, and 
Monroe, but that it would include every Vresident we have had, excepting only the e.\isling inciimbent, Mr. van 
Buren. Nay, it would be seen to comprise mony others of the strongest and most gifted talents of the democratic 
republican party (now so much di.sgraced bv the desecration of its name to impose Jacobinical, locofoco doctrines 
on confiding democrats,) liesidessome of the present prominent locofocoee themselves: of the former, we would 
see tlie names of Wm. H. Crawford. .Alexander .1. Dallas, and General Smith, of Maryland ; among the latter, the 
names of John C. Calhoun, Felix Grundy, and John Forsyth, who are now in close alliance with the moft radical 
locol'oci)ea against the institutions of our country. 



24 

yet lo be mentioned, upon Mr. Van Buren's position of " uncompromising hostility to a bank of 
the United States," and npon his relation of " jVUignus Apollo in General Jackson's counsels. " 

Can it be for a momt'iil supposed that General Jackson would, without Mr. Van Buren's se- 
cret approval, have persisted in favoring the constitutionality of a national bank, (of a certain or- 
ganization, indeed,) notwithstanding Mr. Van Bnrcn's declared infiuence over him, as implied 
i[) those resistless magical powers imputed to him by hii biographer, of " uniting, harmonizing, 
and directine: all with vihom he acted," and as actually exercised by him in eft'ecting other im- 
portant rhan'j;es in Jackson's opinion.^, particularly those of his " reasonable protective tariff," 
and " internal improvement in avowed national objects," as set forth by Mr. Van Buren himselt, 
in regard to the latter, in his Shocco 8piing electioneering letter quoted by Holland, (page 272) 
in which, speaking of the President's Maysville veto message of 1830, he says, '< I throughout 
[the discussion of the principles of that message] gave to the (ueasure, of which that document 
was an exposition, my active, zealous, and anxious suppoutI" What is the true and ob- 
vious import of this "active, zealous, and anxious support," of a veto lo a measure of internal 
improvement, while discussing that measure of an administration, ')f which Mr. Van Buren 
"was the spirit and the creator," at a time, too, when "no formal meetings of the Cai'inel 
Council were holden, {Sec Mirror, page 247,) which cabinet meetini^s General Jackson had 
dispensed with during his Jirf-f cabinet, in order that he might, without jars and conf^ictions 
of opinion, give his whole ear to Mr. Van Buren and his confederates, Kendall & Co. ! It 
surely means a secret, elfective, countervailing influence over General Jackson's preconceived 
individual opinions on the subject; particularly, too, as there w^re no cabinet consultations held, 
and General Jackson did "afterwards adopt" the extreme extent of Mr. Van Buren's new born 
scruples against the constitutionality of "appropriations, even for purposes avowedly o{ a nation- 
al cha acter." — (See Holland, page 274.) 

This important question, then, naturally arises — how came it, that Mr. Van Buren, as the 
spirit and creator of General Jackson's administration, as his chief privy counsellor and clandes- 
tine adviser, failed, nevertheless, to indoctrinate General Jackson against the constitutionality of 
a national bank ] and that we hear nothing of such objection, in the history of the day, until it 
suited Mr. Van Buren, in his electioneering overtures to tlie South, to declare "uncompromis- 
ing hostility to a bank of the United States !" A few facts, to my conception, will render this 
mvsterv as clear as day : it will be palpable that Mr. Van Buren was not at that time of a mind 
to declare his uncompromising hostility to n bank, but wnuld gladly have cooperated with Gen. 
Jackson in procuring the establishment of one, with such organization as would have rendered 
it a fit tool for the abuses of Executive authority .'uid inl'ucnce, and thereby have brought the 
MON'Er powEn materially under Executive control. Grant to Mr. Van Buren (with the exceptions 
I shall show to it) the truth of Holland's statement (page 303) that " he has been a firm oppo- 
nent, throughout his whole }iublic life, of the extension of the banking system in New York, and 
of the Bank of the United States;" grant that, with Mr. Wright, Amos Kendall, and the rest of 
his radical agrarian faction, " he considers wealth an order of nobility {ditto, p. 300) not guard- 
ed against by the bravery or wisdom of our patiiotic forefathers," and that he considers it " the 
grand engine of self-exaltation and popular oppression," used as he has used it ,- grant that " of 
all inventions which have been put in operation in this country," he considers "the most excep- 
tionable are incor])orated companies, and that the worst of all incorporated companies are banks," 
as he would use them ! and that he (Mr. Van Buren) is a real hard-inoney man, opposed to the 
paper system, in favor of a national currency oi gold, and in favor of an adequate silver currency 
for common use {ditto, p. 308 :) grant him, in conunon with his associates, the j^rofession of all 
these opinions as part and parcel of the same system of dcimnciation they have been practising 
towards all the valuable corporations which have been such jiowerful and efficient agent.? in the 
internal improvement and prosperity of every State in the Union, yet, by the very exceptions he 
has made in his practice, to those professions, I should be able to show the insincerity of the one, 
or the wilful and deliberate baseness of the other — that these professions were to answer sinister 
purposes, and tliat they were abandoned or laid on the shelf whenever he could make a contrary 
or temporizing course minister to his ambition. Or why did he, as Governor of New York, pat- 
ronize and recommend the combination of her banks, if not as a political engine, under the title 
of the safety fund system'! Why did he, through his long and faithful political yokefellows, 
Levi Woodbury and Isaac Hill, endeavor to convert the U'nited States Bank into a political in- 
strument at the control of the federal Executive ? Why did he, on failing to accomplish that 
object, conspire with other venal and irresponsible associates of General Jackson to obtain by ob- 
lique approaches and iniimations to Congress, the charter of a Government bank organized upon 
different principles from the then existing bank ,- and, failing in that, resolve its destruction, and 
resort to the association of State banks as depositories of the public moneys, thereby bringing their 
combined inlfuence under the control of the Executive — if all these manoeuvres were not for the 
wicked and selfish purpose of administering to his own amliition, by gaining the command of the 
money power, renardless of the yet untold mischiefs he has brought upon his country? Of the 
most important facts that serve to resolve these queries, I ))roceed (o give a brief account from 
the best authorities, for tlie benefit of the public, who have lucessaiily been unable to sec aiu] 



25 

cnmparc- iheni m jitxtaposiffon, so essrntial to enable tliein to appreciate lliis branch of tbe great 
" system of spoils" by vvliich the country has been beggared, and the Government reduced (o 
bankruptcy. I shall first quote from Holland, (fiages 320, 321, 322) what be tells us Mr. Van 
Bureii said of the New York banks, in his message to the Legislature the 1st January, 1829, 
"after alluding, in the Itappiexl manner, to the distinguished abilities of his predecessor," De 
Wilt Clinton : 

" He (Gov. Van Burmi) says tln^ must iivipdrUiiit business of the session, was the qupstion of renewing tlie cliariers 
of the several hanks in tlie Suae: iliiriy-one charters would expire in the coursp of four years, vi'iili a capital of 
fifteen millions of dollars, and debts amounting to thirty millions. He alludes to the difference between Ilieir 
siuiation al thai lime, and Lhe laying the loundalloti of the banking system anew ; and says, in vie>v of the nxlent 
of these instituti .Its and their close connexion with the ati'airs of the coinmunily, that ' lo dispense with banks, 
altogether, is an idea which seems to have no advocates.' ' He says, that e,\perience is against banking owiieil 
whi lly by the Stale, and that lomake stockhokU rs liable, in their private capacity, ilirowslhe responsibility into 
lhe hands of irresjionsible persons.' ' He finally concludes that the present solvent banks cannot be so suddenly 
closed, without a violent disturbance of the interests of the public ; and alludes to ' a sensible and apparently well 
considered plan' which had been submitted to him, and wliich |iroposed ' to make all the banks responsible fur 
any loss the public may sus'ain, by the failure of any one or more of them.' He then presents a brief epitome o( 
the " safety fund system,' and concludes this part of his message with the remark, that • the interest which attaches 
itself to the representative character, can never be greater thuii w hen the fulfilment of the trust commiued to the 
representative, may bring him in conflict with the claims of the great moneyed interests of the country.' 

■' On the 26lh .laiiuary 18'iil, Mr. Van Buren, in a brief message, introduced [for the second time] to the favurable 
notice of th* Ijegislatiire, tlie celebrated 'safety fund .system,' This plan originated with the hoiioralde .Io,shua 
Fiitman, and wo; \'y him laid I efore j\lr. Van Buren. It was Somewhat modified by the suggestion of the latter 
and finally adopted by the Legislature." ' 

This is nearly all that Holland says on this insidious scheme, except a few extracts from the 
magniloquent praises of it by Thomas Hart Benton, (always entitled to do more harm than good 
to any cause) addressed to General Davis of Mississippi, in pursuance of tiie clandestine system 
of ehdio)ieerlng organized by the cabal at Washington. The following is a more full and 
s^agacious representation and commentary of the same /?/o/ in emtirijo, from the unknown author 
of the Political Mirror, p. 233 : 

"There is a povvet incident to banking institutions, which is stiscr)itible of great abuse. They may couirol their 
debtors and their customers, and nnybe used for political effect. But in the ordinary isolated and independent 
stale of these institutions, tlieir number and adverse interests alm"St annihilate this power. Their stock and their 
business are distributed throughout the community; and as no one, singly, can atfect public opinion, attempts f(.)r 
that purpose have been, consequently, never made. But a moment's consideration will show a case wholly differ- 
ent, where many of these institutions in a State, or in the Union, combine, and are directed by the w ill uf au in- 
dividual or of a parly. The restraint upon the danceruus power of each bank is removed ; the dependant upon 
bank lavor cannot seek relief from oppression by shifting his account ; he has but one mean of oljtniiiing, ijerhaps, 
indispensable pecuniary aid : he nuist conciliate the tiank directors, and their favor is to be pmrchased only by his 
vote and inlhience in political contests. The possible abuse of this power, by individual banks, has, by many sound 
political economists, been objected against tlnir creation ; but their great use overpowered the objection from pos- 
silile aiiuse, until their very number bei'ame protection. But, when banks combine, the power to pervert their 
lacnliies is increased: and the restraint wholly taken away. 

■'Amid all the e.vciiements of parly, fir forty years, no one had conceived the design of combining the banks, to 
control the pojiular voice. No bold and designing politician had, ventured ujion this expedient, until the subtle 
genius of Martin Van Buren seized it in the ijrojecl of the safely bank system of New York. 

'• This syslem, we understand, is not the offspring ef Mr. Van Buren's scheming and prolific brain. It was be- 
gotten, probably, in the purlieus of VVall street, in the commerce of money changers , who looked to it only, so far 
as it regarded ifiemsblves, as a pecuniary speculation, but who were fully aware that the political power it might 
give would be its best recommendation to Governor Van Buren. When first submitted to him, it was received 
coldly. His allenlion, as he lay upon his couch wliilsl the details were read, was divided between the reader and 
a n';'W.spaper : but when the sugo;estion was made, that the combined banks would I'urnish a power which might 
tioi only check the operations of the Bank of the United Slates, but might so control that institution as to render it 
a serviceable engine throughout the Union, instantly, all the energies uf the careless listner were roused. No ear 
of love sick girl ever drank with more intense delight the long-desired, but unexpected, love tale. What a pros- 
pect was here opened ! The banks of the State of New York, weak and useless for ]jariy effect in their individual 
existence, were hooped together, and became like the fasces, the bundle of banded rods borne by the lictors before 
llie tioman Consuls, the representative of irresistible power; whilst the bank of the Uniled Slates [would] like a 
.serpent, wrap all opposing interests in its folds and crush them beneath his feel ! 

' The project was instai'illy ado) 'ted. cherished, matured, and is now, in New York, in full lide of successful e.x- 
periineni. t'he Stale, uverwhelmeii by a moneyed aristocracy [so much reviled by Mr. Van Buren except when he 
can use them to his own purposes] is bound to the car of Mr. Van Buren's ambition. But the lieaiifick vision which 
purapuired his sight, could iioi be immediately and wholly realized. The Bank of the United States could not be 
seduced or coerce'i! to niinislerto his unhallowed ends. The attempt to influence it was not omitted, (however,) 
and lhe war upon that institution which has ensued, so disastrous to the coun'.ry, 'out so beneficent to the ' dominant 
party,' is to bo ascribed to Mr. Van Buren ! !" 

* * * (Page -235.) " Tne safety fund act, passed in 1829, requires that all banks thereafter incoriwrated [ih« 
w hole of the liaiik charters were then about to expire] siiuuld pay annually, for six years, one half per cent, equal 
to a contribution of three percent upon their respective capitals— to remain the property of such banks resjjec- 
lively, but to be vested imder the direction of the Comptroller of the State, in productive slocks, subject to the 
payment of the debts and losses accruing to the community from insolvent banks— thereby making the combined 
banks mutual assurers for each other, uniling ihem in such manner that the whole may be moved by the same 
impul.se, and operate irresistibly upon all other banks in the Stale [and when all should come to be rechaned it 
v/oidd eintirace the whole.] Three commissioners preside over this [manv-headed] monster ; one appointed by 
the Stale, the others by the banks. These are visiters of all the banks of lhe association ; on the suggestion of 
one of whom, the Chancellor of the Slate is required, bv iniunction, to sto)i the proceedings of a bank, and, unless 
cause be shown to the contrary, to subject it to the pains of insolvency. This power, unconni cted with politics, 
may have IfiHo danger, may be, perhaps, useful ; but in lhe hands of politicians, and in the condition of most 
country banks, esjjecially in New York, may, and does, make the banks connected with the system, the subjects 
of party influence. 

* * * (Page ijtj.) '■ Soon after the election of Gener.al Jackson, a meeting was held in Washinston of the prin- 
cipal chiefs of the parly, to consider of the means to iierijetuale their authority, of which pns.session of lhe bank 
was amons lhe most i.irominent. The first manifestation of their purpose was in June, (of the same year,) 1529, by 
an allempUsupporied by !\Ir. Woodburv, then Senator, and since Secretary of ihe Na\y, and now Secretary of the 
Treasury, and by Mr. Isaac Hill, late editor of a violent Jackson journal of ^few Hampshire, then unconfirmed Sec- 
ond Comptroller of the Treai^urv. .ind now a Senator of the United Siate.s.) [sinri> a pension agent, and now Re- 



26 . 

ctiver General of the Treasury at BosionJ to coerce ihe bank to remove the presiJent of the branch bank at Pons- 
inouth. upon party grounds. This attem|jt was counieBanced, if not fully participated in, by l\Ir. Ineham, Secre- 
tary of lliR Treasury, who undertook to give the bank ' the views of the Administration' in relati;jn to 'the appuint- 
meiil. 

■' Upon these extra: irdi nary instances, the bank deemed it necessary to extinguish, if possible, at once, the hope 
of coiivertin!' it into a party ';igent. The presidents the institution, therefore, dislintlly announced to the Secre- 
tary of the 1 reasury that ' the'bank rightly apprehended his views ; and that it became his duty to state, in a man- 
ner so clear as to leave no possibility of misconception, that the boards of directors cf the bank and of its respective 
branches acknowledged not the slightest responsibility to the Secretary of the 'Treasury, touching the pditica! con- 
duct of theirolTicers ; that being a subj ct on which they never consult, and never wish to know the views of any 
Administration ; that, for the bank, which has specific duties to perform, and which belongs to the country and not 
to parly, there was but one course o) honor and safety ; that, whenever its duties came in conflict with llie spirit of 
party, it would not compromise with it, but openly and fearlessly resist it ; that in this its interests concurred witli 
its duly, as it vvoukl be found, at last, that the best' mode of satisfying all parties was to disregard all.' 

"IS'otvvithstanding this decisive rebuke, there lingered in the bosom of Mr. Van Burtuahoiie ilial the bank 
might yet be constrained to sul.'mission, or he dreaded to make upon it a resolute and unequivocal attack before the 
party had been thoroughly prepared to sustain it. Whilst, therefore, the Presidential message of 18-2a struck a dread- 
ful note of preparation lor dancer, it reserved a /oc»s;7a'//i7e«/fa', a place for turning; and such continued the pol- 
icy of tlie parly for three years ! / 

■' III that messuge toe President was made to observe : ■ The charter of the Bank of the United Slates expires in 
1836, and its stockholders will most probaldy apply for a renewal of their privileges. In order to avoid the evils 
resulting from precipitancy, in a measure involving such important principles and such deep pecuniary interests, 
I ff el that 1 cannot, injustice to the partits interested, too soon present it to the deliberate consideration of the Le- 
gislature and the people. Both the constitutionality and the expediency of the law creating this bank, are well 
questioned by a larse portion of our fellow citizens,' &c. * * * In this, there is no committal on the constitu- 
tional power, &c. The paragraph assujnes the character of precaution for the interests of the oarlies. while it tltreat- 
ens the banic with possifile danger. 

" The message ofl830 is more explicit of the views of tlie Administralion. ' Nothing has occurred,' says the Pres- 
ident, ' to lessen in any degree the danger whii h many of our citizens apprehended from that institution, as at present 
organized. In the spirit of improvement and compromise which distinguishes our country and our institutions, it 
becomes us to inquire whether it be not possible to secure the advantaces afforded by the present bank, through the 
agency of a bank of the United States, so modified in its principles and structure as to obviate consiitiuional and 
other objections.' Slill not a doubt is expressed of the constitutional power of Consress. But the existing bank is 
distinctly apprized of the design of the Administration to prostrate it, and to establish another, modified on princi- 
ples which Would obviate the objections of the Presiilent to it. Though the non-conmiittal hand of Martin Van 
Buren be visible here, there is a clear admission of ihe right of the Gov'ernment of the United Slates to incorporate 
a bank, with an expression of a disposition to make one suitable to the views of those now directing the affairs of 
the nation. 

" The subject (of the bank) is very briefly treated in the next annual n-essage of December, 1831, [Mr. Van Bu- 
ren being then absent on his short embassy to England, but left the President more than ever imbued with his wi.shes 
and returned the next spring, after the rejection of his nomination, lo connect his future operations on the money- 
power with his canvass for the Vice Presidency.] The message savs: 'Entertaining the opinions heretofore ex- 
pressed in relation to the Bank of the United Stales, as at present organized, I felt it my duty, in my former mes- 
sages, frankly to disclose ihem.' To disclose what I That the constilulionality and expediency of the law creatine 
the bank was doubted (not by the Administration, but) by a large portion of our fellow-citizen's; that many of our 
citizens apprehended danger from that institution as at present organized. There is evidently [in all ihistena- 
ciousness of the idea of a modified organization] a door kept open for retreat, [from constitutional scruples ;] and, 
had the bank proven itself sufhcienily docile and obedient, a very inconsiderable change in the provisions of its 
charter might have made it, the present bank, constitutional and expedient ; and the 'inany citizens,' who were 
conjured up to ' doubt' or ' apprehend,' would have been annihilated with the same magic wand that had called 
them into being. 

'■ The Administration foresaw, and events soon made it evident to all, that the nation was not prepared for the ex- 
tinction of the bank, when the desigii against it was first conceived. The first attack was repelled at every point. 
The committees of both Houses of Congress reported in favor of the existing bank The Conmntlee of Ways and 
Means distinctly put and ably maintained the following propositions: 1. That Congress had the constitutional 
power to incorporate a bank such as that of the United Slates 2. That it is expedient to establish stch an institii. 
lion. 3. That it is inexpedient to establish a Naiional Bank, founded on the credit and revenues of the Govern- 
ment. 

" Thus rebuked and instructed, a decent respect for the Legislature required that the President should have left 
the subject to them and the people, [whose immediate representatives they wore,] until he should be called lo act 
upon it officially. But this course did not quadrate with the views of the |)arty— of Mr. Van Buren. The nation, if 
suffered to discuss it solely as a question of public pnlicv, would, it was feared, recognise and [lursue its true interests, 
and, in due season, rucharter the bank, and mar f irevc'r the design of the Administralion to enaross and wield tlie 
money-power of the cou-Mtry. An appeal was, therefore, [presumpluously, and in contempt of the rights of the 
whole people through their direct legal representatives,] made from the councils of the nation to the Jackson party, 
[or rather Van Buren faction,] who were termed the people ! !" 

Failing in this scheme of alternative parts, cither to convert the existing bank into an E.xecu- 
tive inachine, or to reorganize its cliarter for the same end, Mr. Van Biiren's third alternative 
was to transfer the "safety bank system of New York" to the General Government, so far as 
the association of State banks as public depositories of the Treasury would give their comliined 
impulses into the hands of the Executive. In order to show that Mr. Van Buren's "associated 
banks" was the model on which the President's new plan was formed, and that Mr. 'van Bu- 
ren, who had returned from England, had located himself at Washington, and was the fellow- 
traveller, the mentor, of the President <iming his Eastern tour, and in close counsel wilh him 
when he wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury from Boston, June 26, 1833, I shall make a few 
quotations from that letter and from iho President's instructions to the agent authorized to make 
arrangements with State banks as depositories and iiscal agents of the Government. 'J'he 
fallacies of reasoning and fact exhibited by those extracts, contrasted with the known results, will 
strike the mind of the reader with as great force ari the singular correspondence between the A'an 
Buren State and the Van Buren federal .issoci.vno.N or h.vxkr, us a lever to control the mox- 

ET POWKU. 

"The State institutions are, in Inn opinion, [J.ickSLUi's letter,] comjieient to perform all liie functions v.hich llie 
United St.ups Bank now performs, or which may be required by the Government. At the same time that they can- 
not so effectually concentrate the money power, ihey cannot be so easily or eflectually used for individual, politi- 
cal, or parly purpises,a3 a Bank of the I'Jnited Slates, under any form, or of any character. It is, therefore, the ile- 
sire of the Preeidenl tliat you should iinmcdiately turn your attention to iIik m'aking of such arrange. men Is as will 



(^naM" ihe Govprnmenl to carry r>n all of its fisi.al nprralions thr^iigh the agency of the Slate banks— (Jackson's let- 
ter to Duane ; spp Narrative, p. 16.) 

" But the insecurity of the public deposites is not the only reason which will justify their removal from the Bank 
of the UnitHcl Staips. The President thinks that the use oV the means and power which they give, to corrupt the 
press and public men, to control popular elections, to procure a recharter, contrary to the decision of the people, [a 
gratuitous assertion,] and to gain possession of tlie Government, which it was created to servp, are substantial rea- 
sons requiring ihpir removal." " But the strongest and controlling reason, in the mind of the President, is thai 
which has bei-n liefore referred to, and which consists in the itecessily of organizins a new scheme for the collec- 
tion,* deposite, and distribution of the public revenue, based on the State banks, and making a fair experivuiit of 
its practicability l,>efore the expiration of the charter of the existing bank ; that the country may have a lair oppor- 
tunity to delerii'iine whether any bank of the United Stales be necessary or not."— (Ditto, p. 26.) 

" Time has shown tliat the curtailment of the accommodations and the circulation of llie bank pioduces no sensi- 
ble effect o\i tlio business of the country." [Indeed !] "The establishment of new Stale hanks, and an extension 
of the old, fill up the space from which the United States Bank withdraws, and the community at large is scarcely 
sensible of tlie change." [Tridy !] " Sucli will be the procress of events, until the bank has wouiid up its coii- 
cerns and ceased to exist, when its absence will neither bf felt nor regretted by the peojjle." [1 commeiul this to 
the special wonder and admiration of the reader.]— (Ditto, p. 27.) 

'• It is the President's opinion that the power over the Slate banks which the Bank of the United States now po.=- 
sesses, is derived almost wholly from its receipts of the public revenue. It is chiefly through the money thus receiv- 
ed tkat it olitains, directly or indirectly, the paper of the State banks and raises balances against them. If its re- 
ceipts of the public revenue shall cease, its means of raising those balances will cease. If the Stale banks become 
the receptacles of the public revenue they will instantly be enabled to raise like balances against the Bank of the. 
United States an'l its brandies. Tliat bank will not otily be deprived of power, but that power will be transferred 
[where ?] into the hands of tiie State banks." 

[So says the Jesuitical prompter of this letter, while, in his mental reservations, he knew that the power would 
be transferred to the hands uf the Executive, who was now about si ducing them to come within his grasp, as may 
be seen by the following e.vtracts from the proposed regidations of them by the President:] 

" Instructions," (to the agent,) " (E.) 1. 'I hat one hank be selected in Baltimore, one in Philadel|jhia, two in New 
York, and one in Boston, with a right on the part of the Government to add one in Savannah, one in Charleston, S. 
C.,one in tho Slatoof Alabama, one in New Orleans, and one in Norfolk, upon their acceding to the t'jrms proposed : 
all which shall receive the deposites in those places respectively, and be each responsible to the Government for 
the whole public deposites, wherever made. 

" (F.) 2. That those banks shall have the right, by a convention of Iheir presidents or otherwise, to select all the 
banks at other points throughout the United Stales, iit which the pttblic money shall be deposited, with an absolute 
negative by the Secretary of the Treasury. 

(G.)"3.'That the Secretary of the Treasury shall have the power to discontinue the deposites in any bank or 
banks or break up the whole arrangement, whenever he may think proper; he giving, in such case, ihe longest 
notice of his intention to do so which tlie jmblic interest may warrant. ' 

(H.) "4. That the primary and secondary banks shall make returns of their entire condition to the Secretary of 
their reasury monthly, or uftener if he shall require it ; and report to the Treasurer weekly the state of his deposites 
with them respectively; and that they shall also subject themselves to a critical examination of their books and 
transRclions, by the Secretary of the Treasury, or an authorized agent, whenever the Secretary may require it." — 
(Ditto, p. K.) 

Ha vine: p^petrated the deed, their e.xtiome solicitude that the substitutes for the iinniolalcd 
fiscal agent of tht; Government should succeed, betrayed the quacks of the administration into 
such extreme stimulation of the State banks (o do every thing that could be done by the United 
Slates Bank, that they presently fiverdid the work with such wild excess as to explode the wliolo 
system. 'J'he Secretary of the Treasury, immediately upon executing Gen. .Jackson's order to 
make the dejtosites in Slate banks, addres.~cd ihe btmks selected to this effect: 

"The depositee of the public money will enable you to afford increased facilities to conunerre, and to extend 
your accommodations to individuals ; ami, as the duties which are payable to Government arise from the business 
and enterprise of merchants engaged in foreign trade, it is but reasonable that they should be preferred in the ad- 
ditional accommodations which the public deposites will enable your institution to give, whenever it can be done 
without injustice to the claims of other classes of the community." — (Extract from the Secretary's letter to the Gi- 
rard Bank of Philadelphia, dated 25th September, 18?3.) 

In 1S20, there were only 308 banks in the United Stales. In 1830, during a space of ten 
years, there had been only twenty-two banks added to the above number, making 330. In 1837, 
there were 7S8 banks, being an inciraso of 458 banks, in little more than two-thirds of the time 
in which tliere had only been an increase of twenty-two banks. But immediately after the re- 
moval of the deposites there were more than 200 new banks chartered in one year. Such were 
the fruits of tbc s/afcsmanship .' of a set of men whose immaculate "director" had professed to 
he theoretically opposed to banks altogether, but had recommended the recharter of the New 
York banks, {as he said,) merely because they were so connected with the business of the citi- 
zens generally, that they could not be sudiieiily dispensed with. Since then, we have secw him 
and his partisans cooperating in the multiplication of banks almost indcfmiteiy, and as suddenly, 
ujHJii the explosion of their wicked <lesigns, turn about to demolish their own progyny, together 
with the whole banking system, which he had avowed could not be dispensed with altogether ! 
Is such a iTian to be longer entrusted with tho management ami " direction" of national affairs, 
wherein tho worst of tyrannies cannot be more disastrous, than the instability he has introduced 
in our laws and our civil institutions P 

Here, then, we have seen that Mr. Van Burin recommended the recharter of all the banks of 
New York in 1829, because, " to dispense with banks altogether, is an idea which seems to have 
noadvocate." Per contra, he is now for cru.^hing them all at once throughout the Union ; and 
his party slaves in Congress have commenced the work at the last session, by crushing those of 
the District of (Columbia, preparatory to the general catastrophe, which his proposition of a bank- 

* This is a deliberate purpose to violate the first of the explicit powers delegated to Congress by the constitution, 
viz : tlidt " Congress shall have power to lay and coLLECTtaxr.a,"' kc. I'y provision oMaw of course, over wliich the 
Preej-lonl has no control, but to execute its provisions. 



28 

vu|it Inw wns intendeJ to effect in another way. Query, ilid not Mr. Van Burcn's lenity toward.'^ 
the banlvK of New York arise from hia scheme then proposed, of " lianding ihein together" a.s a 
political engine ? 

We have also seen that Mr. Van Buren, shortly after putting the aimhinulion, " safety bank 
system," in operation, made overtures and threats to the Bank of the United States, through his 
party friends whom he "directs" to become an executive tool ; and pending three years' anxious 
hope of effecting his object of grasping the money power in this way, suspended all expression 
of his constitutional objections to a bank of the United States ; and on his failure to seduce or 
intimidate tlie bank, even yet, without denouncing the constitutionality of u hank, he takes 
measures to destroy that institution, and to transfer to the Federal Government the system of 
combined State banks, similar to the combined system he had introduced in New York ; and ac- 
tually so far succeeded in his unrighteous purpose, by usurpation and violence to the constitu- 
tion, until the system itself demonstrated the wickedness of the design, and the fatuity of its exe- 
cution, by an universal explosion — partly elTected by the contagious mania, brought about by the 
inspirations of Executive madness, of multiplying State banks and speculations of all sorts, the 
natural fruitions of Mr. Van Buren's inordinate over-reaching ambition. 

Not disheartened, however, at so signal a reproof for his want of patriotism and statesnianly 
foresight, he straightway resorts to a substitute, in a scheme of a sub-Treasury or Treasury bank, 
which his whole party had stigmatized with reproachful eiiithets, while they had better hopes of 
the other schemes. This, also, he has, after repeated efforts, succeeded in forcing to put on the 
oitfivard ga)-b of laic, which its gross violations of the constitution will never sanction, and from 
which, its speedy explosion on account of its utter impracticability, will soon prove the country's 
happv deliverance. 

This measure is uxcoNSTiTUTioxAL, not only because it is not embraced in the .specijic powers 
of Congress, and recognizes the power assumed by the President to 'collect' and keep the reve- 
nue, in violation of an express power given to Congress to collect and keep by its own officer, the 
-Secretary of the 'J'reasury, whose fifcal reports are ordered to be made to Congress direct — but 
because it cannot be inferred as an implici] poivcr, it lieing neither necessary nor proper " to 
aid in conducting the national linance.s, " which it will obstruct instead of aiding; nor tofacilflate 
" the obtaining loans on emergency," as it will impede those facilities by the general embarrass- 
ments that will ari.se from it; nor will it conduce " to the advantage of lra<le and industry," but 
the contiary, by withholding from active circulalion the whole amount of the I'evenue, for a 
great portion of the year, while it is locked up in the vaults of Receivers General. 

It is iJiPHACTJCAHLK, bccausc it conveys conHictir.g and incompatible authority to the Secretary 
of the Treasury, the Postmaster General, and the 'J'rcasurer of the United Slates, over the de- 
posites in the hands of Receivers General, empowering either to control the entire depositcs by 
transferring them to any jioint, or detaining them in despite of one another, and therefore in utter 
derogation of a prompt, regular, and consistent action, according to the exigencies of the Govern- 
ment — leaving, indeed, the salutary or deleterious interposition of the President in such emer- 
gency, to be implied, by another eifort of usurpation over law, rather than provide for the possible 
contingency. 

The bill would also be unconstit'jtioxal, even were il j>rnc(:'ccih/c, and could contribute in any 
degree as an implied power to accomplish the objects of specitic powers, because it involves so 
iHtst an expense, and increases Executive poiver to so dangerous an extent, that it would be the 
last of all practicable resorts to accomplish those objects consistently with "the common defence 
and the general welfare of the country," essential to the constitutionality of every law, but which 
this puts in imminent jeopardy. On the other hand, without casting about for any other more 
practicable and economical device, the \cry institution which has been destroyed in order to erect 
this upon its ruins, was more efficient in every respect, and entirely economical, as it cost the 
Government nothing, but paid it a bonus, anJ, while sustaining itself above "executive dicta- 
lion," rcstrHtned instead of enlarging " Executive power." 

But especially is tliis law unconstitutional, because it OHiniXATEn ix th>; Sexatk. The 
constitution says : "All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representa- 
tives." Most of the Slate constitutions express this inhibition of the Senate thus: "All monri/ 
fn'lls shall originate in the House of Representatives." Without insisting that this clause of the 
State consiitutions is the true exponent of the above clause of the federal constitution, (and it 
lias been the practice of Congress so to construe* it,) but confining myself to the straitest 
sense of the phrase "all bills for raising revenue," it will be manifest, from the title of the sub- 
Treasury bill, that it is a bill for raising revenue. Its title is, " An act for the collection, safe- 
keeping;, tiansfer, and disbursement of the public revenue." Now, to place the proposition be- 
yond dispute, that a bill for the collection and safekeeping of the revenue must constitute an 
essential and indispensable part of the system of " raising revenue," I will suppose a simple case. 



♦ The bill for appropriaiini; gH,000,000 ("or fortifications, to provide for a French war, into which General Jacksim 
was hurrying us a fow yearn acn, \y:is atiariilouril on nccminl of Iho objprlion that il oricinatpd in thi! Scnatr. 



2f) 

Suppose the constitution were just going into o[)eration, and a bill for "raising rcvenne" were 
about to be enacted for the first time : will it be pretended that a bill apportioning the taxes, 
duties, imposts, or excises, would bj perfect without a provision for their co//ec/«o?i and saftkeep- 
imr, whether in the same or in a separate bill 1 Such a provision would assuredly form a part 
of the system of "raising revenue;" otherwise no revenue would be raised. Well, such a sys- 
tem has long ago been established : will it, tlierefore, be pretended that now an attempt to change 
the whole system of collection and safekeeping, or even any part of it, is not an essential inter- 
ference with, abrogation of, or remodeling, the system of "raising revenue?" And, if it be, it 
is undoubtedly necessary that such a bill should originate in the House of Representatives. 
Gentlemen of the locofoco stamp may persist in their obstinacy, and continue to place them- 
selves, as they are wont to do, above law and the constitution, but there is no getting rid of the 
force of demonstration, or the opprobrium of disregarding it. 

Yet, notwithstanding the outrages proposed to be perpetrated by this bill in a thousand ways, 
?*lr. Van Buren has dared to insult the good sense of the American people by calling it "a 
second declaration of independence," and has actually burlesqued the ceremony of signing the 
sacred instrument of "American Independence" by expressly setting apart the holy day of the 
FOURTH OF July, at 12 o'clock, to sign this bill of abominations, which, in fact, threatens the 
subversion of the liberties o\ir forefathers won with their blood and treasure. And straightway 
Mr. Ritchie, too, chimes in, and echoes "a second declaration of independence" — he who had 
condemned this same bill, when it was first proposed, as "enhancing the Executive patronage 
which ought to be diminished, and as dangerous to American liberty." 

But this is not all. Mr. Van Buren, under the pressure of embarrassments and panic in 
which his unaccountable blunders have involved him, is so far demented as to issue, in his re- 
cent electioneering letters, a "gross libel against the niemory of W^ashington, by characterizing 
him as one of the founders of "measures devised by the friends and advocates of privileged 
orders, for the purpose of perverting the Government from its pure and legitimate objects, vest- 
ing all power in the hands of the few, and enabling them to profit at the expense of the 
M.4.NT" — as one of those by whose conduct " the few were enabled to enrich themselves by 
using the money winch belonged to the many," and "in clear violation of the spirit of a 
constitutional »?-oA;6('^jot" — as one of the founders of " an extensive interest," " deriving wealth 
from the use of the people's money," "in palpable violation of the spirit of the constitu- 
tion" — as one whose gross errors Pre.'=ident Van Buren was to reform by a measure, by means 
of which "the management of an important branch of our national concerns, after a depart- 
ure OF nearly half a century, will be brought back to the letter, as well as to the ob- 
vious spirit and intention, of the constitution." This is the picture of Washin«ton, as drawn 
by the hand of Van Buren ! ! Truly the President has, in this instance, gone beyond his 
pledge to tread in the footsteps of his " illustrious predecessor." That predecessor had, in 1796, 
contented himself with a species of negative insult to Washington, by refusing to join in a 
vote in the House of Representatives, on the occasion of his final retirement from public life, ex- 
pressing its sense of his public services. President Van Buren, true to his prondse of imitating 
President Jacktson, attempts to "perfect the work he had so gloriously begun," by telling the 
American People, in substance, that Washington was "a deliberate violator of the constitu- 
tion" which he had solen)nly sworn to obey I This act of fatuous effrontery (and injustice) has 
roused the indignation of the country so strongly, that any direct defence of it has, so far as we 
have noticed the papers of the day, been avoided even by the most reckless advocates of the 
present administration." — {See the National Intelligencer of August 27.) 



HI. Mr. Van Buren the author andperfecter of the great spoils system — The direct spoils 
of office only a branch of that system — A key to the machinery used, to bring this whole sys- 
tem to perfection, and concentrate it in the hands of the President, consisting of the Press, the 
Post Office, the Armed Force, and the Appoint itig Power — Their several uses and abuses in 
the hands of a corrupt Executive, in monopolizing the whole money-power, and reducing ^^the 
Commonivealth to a spoil." 

It is necessary again to recur back a little beyond the commencement of Mr. Van Buren's 
career in the United States Senate, in order to begin the review (which runs through this period 
till he reached the Presidency) of his exploits in the direct "spoils of ofllce," according to the 
definition given in the beginning of the second Section of this period of his life, in which, I 
have also treated of some of the subjects that belong to the other two branches of that "great 
system of spoils" to wliich he has subjected all the resources, public and private, of this great 
republic. 

We have .seen that Mr. Van Buren, precocious in all the arts of " uniting, harmonizing, and 
directing" the passions of party, was, at a very early period of his political life, (more than 
twenty years ago,) the author and projector of the New York " regency school" of politics called 
the "spoils system ;" that is to say, in the mitigated form of expression used by his biographer, 

" He avowed the principle that the dominant partv should always v'seess anJ e.vercise the official patronage." 
(See Holland, p. 198.) 



30 

I shall now give a lew further evidences of his continuance and perfection of that system, in 
the various protean shapes which his ingenuity and his opportunities enabled him to give it, in 
transferring it from his State to the Federal Government — and for what object ! 

It is a matter of record in the Post OfHco Department, that, in 1829, when Mr. Van Buren 
was a candidate for a seat in the United States Senate, to become the colleague of Rufus King, 
whose election he had procured, he canvas^scd with great zeal, upon the prescriptive principle of 
the "spoils system," to secure his election to that body, by the success of his own party in the 
State IjCgishUurc, through the ofiicial influence of postmasters of his own selection, to fill the 
places of those he reported to the Postmaster General for removal. Let the following letter suf- 
fice here as evidence of that fact : 

" Vun Buren's letter to the Hon. Henry Meigs, requiiiug the removal of certuiu officers in order to secure his 
election to the Senate of the United dilates. 
" My Dear Sir : Our sufferings owing lo ihe rascality of ilepuiy postniasiers is intolerable, and cries aloud for 
relief. We find it. absolutely iiiipossitile to penetrate the interior with our [lapers, and unless you aiiaiiuliem by 
I wo or three prompt removals, there is no limiting the injurious consequences that may result from it ; let me there- 
fore, entreat the Postmaster General to do an act of justice, aiid render us a partial service, by the removal of Holt, 
of Herkimer, and the apiinintmpnt of Jaljez Kox, Esq.— also, of Howell, of Bath, and the appointment of an ex- 
cellent friend, W. B. Rochester, Esq.. a youne man of the first respectal)ility and worth in the State — and the re- 
moval of Smith, at Little falls, and the appointment of HoUister — and the removal of Chamberlain, in Oxford, and 
the appointment of Lot Clark, Esq. I am in extreme haste, and can therefore add no more. Use the enclosed 
papers according to your discretion, and if any thing is done, lei it be quickly done, and you may rely upon it, 
much good may result from il. " Yours, affectionately, 

" M. VAN BUREN. 
" The Hon. Henry Meios. 
"Apbii, 4, I6l9." 
Of the subsequent "additional" proscriptive lists furnished in pursuance of the above, and 
other details on that head, il is not material to inquire. He succeeded in obtaining a seat in 
the Senate, according to his wishes, by the vote of a small majority of the next Legislature. 
And I believe, with others of infinitely more profound research than myself, " that Mr. Van 
Buren came into the General Government with an eye fixed upon the Presidency, :ind with a 
determination to reduce to practice in that Government the ethics of the IV'ew York school, as a 
means of arriving at his object;" for "he was not long in the Senate before he gave indications 
of that [the latter] determination as far as wa.'i in his power." Early in the session of 1821-'22, 
a»vacancy having occurred in the post oflice at Albany, and it being understood ihat Gen Solo- 
mon Van Rensselaer, a gallant soldier of the Revolution and of the late war, was likely to be 
a[)pointed to the situation, Mr. Van Buren interfered to prevent it, and procure a partisan ap- 
pointment, as will appear by the following extract from his letter to the Postmaster General, in 
which ho "united" the concurrence of one or two friends: 

" Knowing, as we do, that the Republicans of the Stale of New York will regard it as a. matter of great impor- 
tance that the post office at tlie seat of Government should be in the hands of "a gentleman of ihesaine political 
character with ihemsplves ; and anxious that thpy .should fully understand the principle which, in this particular, 
governs your department, we have fell it lo lie our duly and our right to present, on this occasion, that question res- 
pectfully, but distinctly, to your consideration." 

But the Postmaster General, Mr. Meigs, and the President, Mr. Monroe, not being diverted 
by this covert threat from their determination to give the appointment to Gen. Van Rensselaer, 
Mr. Van Buren addressed to his friends at Albany a letter of condolence, and jjointed to a hope 
in the future ; from which the following is an extract : 

" You have now the same nieaas of judging as ourselves how far you may, with propriety, resjard the appointment 
in this case as decidiug, that, in the administration of the Post Office Liepartment, political di8tinclii)ns give nu 
preference. Thai you will be disappointed and mortified we can readily believe; but we trust that vou will not 
be disheartened. While there are no men ir^ the country more enured to pnlitical sutTering than the I{epublicaii3 
of New Y'ork, there are none who have stronger reasons to be satisfied of the irrepressilde energy of tlie Democratic 
parly, and that no abuses of their Confidence can lone remain beyond ihf ir reacli and plenary correcliuu. On this 
conviction wo trust you will repose yourselves, and act accordingly." 

Here, ihen, we have the satisfaction to lay before the great American Democracy the first de- 
liberate attempt to desecrate their magnanimous, popular denomination, to the purposes of pan- 
dering to a "spoils faction." The sagacious commentary of the editor's of the National Intel- 
ligencer-, (August 15,) remarks on this movement, that Mr. Vatr Buren "failing, through the 
coolness and wariness of the two veteran patriots .Monuoe and Mf.ig.s, in the attempt to estab- 
lish his power in the General Government by a coup dc main, had the prudence to change his 
tactics, and to pursue his objkct by paths less direct but more easily practicable.''^ 

After his signal disappointmetrt in the case of the .\lhany post olFice, in pursuance of his own 
advice of patient resignalioir and hope in the future, we notice little or no evidence of Mr. Van 
Buren's further action upon the "spoils of ofiice," while in the Senate, until the latter part ofi 
Mr. Adams's administration. His own State had, in 1824, pronounced Gen. Jackson incom- 
petent for the Presidency when her electors cast for Mr. Adams 26 votes, for Mr. Crawford 5 
votes, for Mr. Clay 4 votes, and for Gen. Jackson only 1 vote. Of course Mr. Van Buren was 
virtually pledged to the support of Mr. Adams's administration. Moreover, his own Senatorial 
term would expire before another election of President. This explains the restraint he put upon 
himself in taking no open part in the earlier workings of certain conclaves in Congress against 
Mr. Adanrs, preparatory to a second canvass for the Presidency, until after his own re-election 
to the Senate. " It was enough (^says the Mirror, p. 39) to have it known by his contemp- 



31 

lated dupes that he was opposed to the iidiiiiniwtration, and disposed, under certain undefined con- 
tingencies, to support the pretensions of (Jenerai Jackson." The same author informs us (p. 
37) that the "existence and character of these conclaves, by which a powerful party was gradu- 
ally formed, involving a 7najority of ti>e Senate, were first developed on the 1st of March, 1827, 
by the vote on the choice of printer.''' Previous to this time, we are informed by the same author, 
that Mr. Van Buren had "carefully avoided the sessions of ike organized cabal, and had caused 
cautionary monitions ago.\nsi premature committal for any candidate to be circulated throughout 
his State. Uncommitted him.self, he was any body's, and, consequently, every body's man, 
and was re-electid to the Senate by a very unanimous vote, 'i'he inference was drawn that the 
vote of New York in the next Presidential election was placed in his hands. New importance 
was thence given to his position at Washington, and he was emiioldened more openly, hut with 
scarce more efficiency, to mingle in the intrigues against the administration, and to appear at 
the SKCHET cahal, at which the great combination was effected." — (Mirror, p. 39.) 

This was indeed a tedious suspense of Mr. Van Buren's customary participation in the 
"spoils of office" for party purposes, during a whole Senatorial term. But the best he could 
make of the necessity that imposed inertness upon hiiri was, to be ready at the instant of a pro- 
pitious turn of his fortune. Being now re-elected for a second term to the Senate, he lost not 
a moment in laying aside the mask, and seized the occasion of the vote above mentioned for 
printer to the Senate on the 1st March, 1827. 

The Political Mirror says,- (page 37,) " The nature of this vote is not a matter of inference 
merely. It is explained by the testimony of one [Mr. Van Buren himself] who was a party to 
it, and avowed it to be a parly vote." Mr. Van Buren, who had the greatest power in preparing, 
and took the most active part in advocating that vote, distinctly avowed the motive. He said : 

" He had Imig been of opinion that the public interest mi^ht be promoted, and the condition of the press, as well 
here as throughout the country, improved, and respect for the Senate, and economy in tlie publication of the prn- 
ceedinss of the Senate better secured, liy a judici.^us revision of the laws relating to the public pjrinling at large. 
At a more convenient season he hoped the sul'ject would be revised ; and he promised himself the best results from 
such revision as the nature of the subject was susceptible of." 

This avowal of Mr. Van Buren is far less important as it relates to the primary direct spoils 
of office in question, than as it relates to the secondary indirect spoils of office then in prospect- 
ive. Though the iminediate result of hi.s j-olicy was, to elect a partisan ot the new party com- 
bination of the Senate t)y a mere jilurality vote of one, and not by a majority of the Senate, after 
repeated ballotings to supersede the editors of the National Intelligencer, who had advocateil the 
election of Mr. Crawford, the personal and political friend of Mr. Van Buren, and who had sup- 
ported the administration of Mr. Adams as their second choice, whom Mr. Van Buren's own State 
had preferred for ihe presidency — and, what is still more remarkable, though the printers, now su- 
perseded by the new party coiidiination, had been elected the term before with the co-operalion 
of Mr. Van Buret), without opposition, and had in the mean time coimnitted no ofience but to 
maintain their own integrity by rejecting party o\ertures for their seduction from the supporl of 
the iidminjsiration, (all of which sufficiently declare the covert party malignity and inveterate 
" purpose of the spoils" in the priiici|)al actor in this affair,) I say, the secondary indirect aspect 
of the professions vsith which he urged this vote, was infinitely more portentous of the evil con- 
sequences that followed in its train ; and it is on that account that I have taken more pains in 
stating the particulars of it. But the tendency and bearing of the motives avowed on the occa- 
sion, I will, an a specimen of prophecy reaiiZ(d, leave to be explained by the lucid commentary 
of the author of the Political .\iirror, who speaks of it, pp. 37, 38, thus: 

" We have said, that this is a distinct avowal of the sentiments of the speaker; but it is to be observed, thai the 
speaker was Mr. Van Buren, disiinguislied by his skill in luysiification, and his art of giving to his sentences an 
heimaphnnlite character. We draw I'mm tlie declara ion the inference— which, considerinc Mr. Van Buren as a 
candidate for llip hi^ihest office ot the country, is as important as it is alannmg, showing how unlimited are his 
ideas of [lower perlainins to the General Government— the inference, that Mr. Van Buren ueems thai Congre/is, ljy 
a ' judicious revision,' (a phrase admirably ajiprupriate, from its obscurity and indefiuiteness, to the assumjjtion of 
forbidden powers,) may improve, i. e. direct and control, the press throughout the United States." 

That sagacious author goes on to remark, that Mr. Van Buren's text "was fully explained 
by the practical commentary which was immediately given to it by the dismissal of Gales and 
Scaton (as supporters of the administrati(m) from the employment of the Senate, and by the 
subsequent distribution of the public printing and all other official favors by the adininistration 
of General Jackson, ofiuhich Mr. Van Buren is the vital spirit as he w^as the creator." But 
I atn astonished it siiould escape the inquiry of our author, what "respect for the Senate" Mr. 
Van Buren could desire "to secure from the Press," compatiblp uith the freedom of that /?a//a- 
(//wm of our liberties. , 

It cannot but be, now, a matter of curiosity to many, to hear what the elements of this cabai, 
said on the subject of " Executive patronage," which they projiosed to " regulate by law," the 
session before the above vole, when that combination was oidy iti its forming state, and of which 
Mr. Van Buren, as we have just seen, was the occult, clandestine, master spirit. An extract 
of the report (May 4, 1826) ol a committee of the Senate composed of Messrs. Benton, Macon, 
Van Buren, White, Findlay, Diclerson, Holmes, Hayne, and R. M. Johnson, appointed "to 
inquire into the expediency of amending the constitution," and further instructed "to inquire into 



32 

tlie expediency of dhuinishing or regulathtg the paironuge of tlie Executive of the United 
States," with leave to report by bill or otherwise, will show that Mr. Van Buren and his asso- 
ciates of the majority of the committee did affect to denounce the abuse of Exectitive patronage 
or the " spoils system," through a sheer purpose of raising a false alarm against the administra- 
tion, when such a system actually did not exist, and as yet never had existed in the Federal 
Government. The said committee#eported, on the day mentioned, six bills, viz: 

1. " A bill lo re£.nilate the piibliealioii of the laws tif ihe United States, and of pulilic advertisements." 

2. " A hill to secure in nffice the faithCul collectors and disbursers of the revenue, aiid lo displace defaidlers " 
.'1. " A bill to regulate tlie appointment of postmasters." 

4. "A bill to regulate the appointment of cadets." 

5. ''A bill to regulate the appointment of nntlstiipmen." 

6. " A bill to jirevent military and naval officers from being dismissed the service at the pleasure of the Presldeni." 

Now, in order to understand the full purport of these bills as nearly as may he, and the bare- 
faced hypocvicy of certain members of the committee who framed them, and have since been 
foremost in sharpening the appetites and letting loose tlie hell hounds of the whole system of 
the spoils, take the following beautiful extract from the report accompanying said bills: 

* * » " The committee must then take things as they are; iiot beins able to lay the axe at the root of the tree, 
thcv must go to pruning among the limbs and branches. Not lieing able to reform the consiiiulioii in the election 
of President, they musf go to "work upon hi.s powers, and trim down these by statutory enactments, whenever it 
ran be done by law, and with a just regard to the proper efficiency of the Government. For this purfiose they have 
I'eported the si.K bills which have been enumerated. They do not pretend to have exhausted the suliject, but only 
to have seized a few of its prominent points. They have only touclied in four places, the vast and pervading sys- 
tem of federal executive patronage: the Press— the Post Office — the Armed Force— and the Appdnling P'wer. 
They are few com]iared to the wlwle number of points, vital to the liberties of the country ! The Press is put 
foremost, because it is the moving power of human action. The Post-office is the hand -maid of the press. The 
Armed Force is its executor. And the Appointing Power is the 'directress of the whole!"' ♦ * * "In the 
country for which the committee acts, the Press, (with some exceptions,) the Post office, 'the Armed Force, and the 
Appointing Power, are in the hands of the President, and the President himself is not in the hands of the people." 

If the reader will contrast the subsequent conduct of the party with this delectable exposition 
of the practicable patronage of the Executive, (practicable in the opinion of the Van Buren ma- 
jority of the committe, for it had never been used and was not considered, morally, jiracticable 
to use it, by the wisest and purest men in the earlier days of the republic,) he will at once have 
a key, not only to .Mr. Van Btiren's " hermaphrodite expression" of his sentiments about a judi- 
cious " revision" and " improvement of the Press here and throughout the United States ; but, 
taken with their forbearance to press those bills to a final passage into law, he will perceive that 
they were, with the report, only intended as an electioneering demonstration against the then 
administration, (which Mr. Van Buren's cabal had resolved, as it was profanely expressed by 
another prominent member, Richard M. .Johnson, now Vice President, that "it should he put 
down, were it as pure as the angels which stand at the right hand of God." — Political Mirror, 
p. 41.) For, the sequel of their conduct has shown that the whole of those resources of 
the " spoils system," direct, indirect, and remote, should they ever fall into their own hands, 
were too highly appreciated to be thus "pruned and lopped off" by legislative enactments at 
their instance. Taking these engines of the spoils, as afterwards used by the corrupt dynasty 
whicli succeeded the administration of Mr. Adams, in the order in which the party chieftains 
arranged them while acting as legislators, with Mr. Van Buren at their head, as " harmonizer 
and director,"' I shall give a specimen of their plan of "revision and improvement of the Press," 
their uses of the "Post Office Department," and of the "Armed Force;" when, finally, I shall 
come to the subject of the spoils of office proper, as their fourth object oi practicable Execttite 
i'ATROS.voE in the "Appointing Power." 

'J'he specimen I select in regard to the improvement of the Press, is from a party witness of 
their own, exposing the agency of one of Mr. Van Buren's most accredited lieutenants, whom 
he has recently deputized from the Post Office Depirtment, to act as generalissimo of his party 
organized Press here and throughout the Union. It relates to the parly drilling which the edi- 
torial corps friendly to the administration were fated to undergo, upon the contemplated reuioval 
of the deposites, as upon all other important party measures that are ever contemplated by their 
chieftain. James G. Bennett, Esq., one of the editors friendly to the administration at tho 
time, feeling himself insulted by the course of dictation ])ractised towards him by the cabal at 
Washington, made an exposition of this "influence behim) tukthhoxe," in a series of let- 
ters to the public shortly after the date of those imperliaent instructions which h» received direct 
from Amos Kendall and R. M. Whitney. The editors of the National Intelligencer com- 
tnenced the republication of Bennett's expose; in their paper of the 7th January, 1834, introdu- 
cing it to the public, with an editorial article, in the first and concluding paragraphs of which 
•they observe : •" Our readers will not need to be info'rmed, that in a series of essays addressed to 
them on 'the Bank Question' in August and September last, we euilcavored to make them ac- 
quainted with the character and objects of a cabal, then laboring to effect the removal of the Pub- 
lic Deposites, with the ulterior object of crushing the United States Bank. In those essays we 
shadowed out, but too faintly, we fear, the consequences which would follow the consummation 
of their wishes and labors. We did not then kn()w so much as we now do, of the length and the 
dspth of their machinations ; nor did we then suppose that the ' Government' of the United 
States was so completely under the injluaice of their counsels, as subsequent disclosures seem 
to indicate too clearly to be doubted. » * ♦ 



33 

"The Pennsylvaniaa is the title of the foremost administration paper in the city of Piiiladclphia, 
of which, our readers may remember, Mr. James G. Bennett (formerly connected with the 
Courier and Enquirer) was recently the editor. Having been unceremoniously ousted from that 
post, for want of sufficient pliability of conscience for its iitanageTs, he has felt it to be incum- 
bent on him to raise the curtain, and e.xhibit the machinations of as reckles.s a band ni c.nnfedt- 
ratea as perhaps ever undertook to turn the aHairs of a g^at Government to their own per.sonal 
advantage. This he has begun in a .series of letters, of which the three first now lie before us. 
If we were not so prcssed by other matters, demanding a place in our columns, we should con- 
3ider it due to Mr. Bennett to give them entire. But, lo spread the e.s.'^ential part of them be- 
fore our readers, we are obliged to content ourselves with such extracts as serve to throw light 
on the present posture of political aflhirs, and to expose the wickedness and wantonness with 
which the public interests have been played with by the underlings who have possessed and 
abused the conlidcnce of the Chief Magistrate. These extracts we subjoin, purposely abstaining 
from comment, except merely to say, that Mr. B. has, so far as he has gone, fully redeemed his 
pledge to the public, and vindicated his own honesty of purpose." The editors of the Intelligen- 
cer then proceed to give the extracts from Bennett, containing two letters troin Amos Kendall 
and one from R. M. Whitney, with remarks of Mr. Bennett upon each. For want of room I 
can only copy the Intelligencer's extract of Mr. Bennett's general remarks on the topics involv- 
ed, leaving out Kendall and V\ hitney's letters with Mr. Bennett's remarks upon each. 

'Extracts f ro.'.i Bennett's letteks.— " Andrew Jackson was raised to tlie liighesl slalion which a free people 
can bestow in lSi8-'29. * * * A small land of desperate men, under the excitement and iriuraph of his first 
election, having succeeded to worm themselves into the subordinate ollices at Washington, liave availed themselves 
of that very popularity and success lo create one of the most ferocious tyrannies that ever reared its head in a 
counlry'calling itself free and intelligent. 

" During thelast two or three years, this unseen irresponsible body of individuals, consisting principally of sub- 
ordinate officers of the Executive Government at Wasliingtnn and elsewhere, have created a confederacy and or- 
ganized a power, which has for its purpose an entire change in the Government of tlie United States, as establish- 
ed by the patriots of the revolution, and guarantied by the principles of the existing constitution. * * * This 
irresponsible cabal, who control and write for the oflicial journal called the Globe, have made, jn twelve months, 
more rapid strides to subvert public liberty— destroy the checks of the constitution— degrade Congress— disgrace 
Ihe cabinet— subvert the liberty of the press, than a military leader, with fifty thousand liayonets at his back, could 
have achieved in twenty years, in the lace of a brave people, who knew their rights and could defend them. * ♦ * 

'■ By the success of such a scheme, the whole frame of the Government would be reversed at a blow, and hence- 
forth Congress would be reduced lo a couple of contempiible recording corporations, ready to sanction the decrees 
of the temfjorary dictator, whoever he might be. 

'' One of the principal elements of this conspiracy, is the organization of the Govenment officers and the news- 
paper press throughout the country, in the shape of a permanent body ol police, empowered to circulate the de- 
crees of the central conspirators, denounce the refractory, dpstroy the character of the independent, and elevate 
llie power and prerogatives of the Executive, without the slightest regard to the constitution or laws of the country. 

'■ Taking into consideration the state of the public mind — the situation of the country— the personal feelings of 
the President— the prosress of power, there never was so favorable an opportunity since the revolution for the'en- 
5arge!nent of the Presidential [irerogalive— the destruction of the constitution — the degradation of Congress, and 
the' ultimate erection of a dictatorship, or rather a veloship upon the ruins of all. 

"The Washington Globe is the organ of the prime conspirators. Its ostensible editor is F. P. Blair, * * * i,ut. 
The principal editor is Amos Kendall, the 4lh Auditor, who, it is believed, also participates in the profits of the es- 
lablishment. * * * He is the master spirit of the confederacy, and contrives as well as executes the general 
plans of spoliations, and the individual executioner of the refractory, be he either a cabinet ii inister, meniber of 
Conaress, or a newspaper editor. * * * Blair is * * * Whitney is ' a picker up of loose papers,' a glean- 
er of little things about banks, which Kendall shapes into editorial paragraphs, for the latter is entirely ignorant of 
the first principles about banking and currency, and scarcely ever attempts 10 talk on the subject without news- 
paper au'hority before him. 

^^'' When a new editor of any standing or talenl-s begins business, he is inuiiedialely written lo by the conspira- 
tor's at Washington, in the name of the President, or of'ihe repulilican parly, and a course is marked out for his 
especial guidance. ' The following letters show the beginning of the game which these august personages attempt- 
ed to play with me, through tlie lust summer, until they discovered I claimed an entire independence in the man - 
iigementof my paper, and chose to think and act for myself. This discovery brought out their whole power 
against me," kc. &c. 

The extent to vvhich "thk Post Ofkick" has been used as an engine of the spoils party in 
vt thousand ways, since their cabal in the Senale affected to cry out against those abuses which 
ihey prefigured to the public before they existed, ought to be sufiiciently known to relieve me 
from any details here, save Only to say, in general term*, that, in a very short time after these 
hypocritical reformers came into power, the pecuniary resources of the Department were reduced 
from the flourishing condition of $202,811 40, surplus on hand, to a deficit of §450,000 indebt- 
edness, in consequence of illegal borrowing from the banks, to meet the profligate waste in pay- 
ing electioneering agents and party favorites under the pretence of f^/?-o.y due to mail contractors, 
for the most part fraudulently incurred'. It may well be supposed that the whole operations ol 
the Department corresponded very much with the corrupliop of its fiscal branch. — (See the re- 
,^uUs of same half dozen reports of committees of investigation of hutli. Houses of Congress since 
1831.) But of its abuses of the franking privilege, to subserve the purposes of a corrupt Exec- 
utive in manufacturing and dictating opinions for public adoption, by disseminating them in an 
imposing manner through the channels of the mail, I will give a single instance, to show how 
truly the commiltee of the Senate in 1827, under the magic wand of Mr. Van Buren,- apprecia- 
ted the Post Office as "the handmaid" of his uevised press. It is a copy of an engraved or 
■fiihographed letter, (except the date and signatut-e, )' which may be printed by thousands, (and 
thousands of other forms suited to other subjects may have been adapted to their desires as well 
as this,) requiring only the date and signature of the executive ofiicersat the seal of Government, 
3 



34 

using aiul abusing the franking} privilege, to flood the country with the edicts of the executive 
junta, "issued or to bo issued." The original is on file at the Madisonian office, whose editor 
has been favored with it by some one of the persons to whom it had been addressed. 

" Washington City, January 31, 1S38. 

" Sir : I enclose you, hrrewiUi, a prospectus for the Extra Globe, with the first number as a sample. These pa- 
pers will explain ihemselveB. The cheap rate at which the Extra Globe will be published will enable every man 
in the country lo become a subscriber. For* singlf dollar he can obtain a weekly newspaper, published at the 
seat of the National Government, containiiis the latest political and foreign news. If a number of persons choose 
to unite and forward a larser sum, the subscription lo each, as you will perceive by the terms of the prospectus, will 
be less than a dollar. Whilst our political opponents control a majority of the public presses in every State, it is 
believed, in the Union, and have in tlieir employ a corps of letter-writers stationed in this ciiy and elsewhere, who 
are daily misrepr sentins public men and public measures, it becomes important, to counteract their effect, that a 
cheap medium through which true information may be conveyed to the people should be patronized. The Globe, 
it is well-known, is the leading democratic paper ; and, because it is so, great efforts have been made by the federal 
party to impair iis just influence on public opinion. They have not succeeded. 

" Let me hope that you will take sunie interest in giving to the Extra Globe an extensive circulation in your 
neifjiborhood. ' " 1 am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, H. L. ELLSWOKTH." 

The intelligent reader will perceive that the scandalous allegations in the latter part of the 
above letter are more descriptive of the " hirelings" of the administration than of their opponents, 
to whom they falsely and maliciously apply them. Other instances, in abundance, of the sub- 
serviency of the Post Oifice to the purposes of the spoilers are familiar to most persons con- 
versant with the history of the times: therefore, I hasten to a brief survey of the next count — 
the subserviency of the " AR^ri:i) Force" in the hands of a corrupt Executive. Moreover, the 
style of this letter declares it to be the composition of the then Postmaster General himself, Amos 
Kendall, being the counterpart of his recent circular on the same subject. 

The reader should perpetually bear in mind the remark of the committee of Mr. Van Buren's 
friends of the Senate, in 1827, that " the Prkss is put foremost, because it is the moving power 
of human action" — that "the Post Office is the handmaid of the Press" — that "the Armed 
Force is the executor" — and that "the Appointtnc; Power is the directress of tlie whole." 
Let him then turn his eyes to the means resorted to in order to insure that the "Armed 
Force" shall hi "the executor" of " their decrees, issued or lo be issued," through the Press, 
the Post Oifice, or otherwise, under the direction of the "Appointing Power," the President! 

The "Ahmed Forck" of the regular standing army has already been increased nearly double, 
under the patronage and recommendation of Mr. Van Buren, since he has been commander-in- 
chief o{ the army ! But, in his annual message of the 2fth of December last, he has gone the 
whole figure. Speaking of that part of the report of the Secretary of War, accompanying his 
message, detailing a plan of an armed force of 200,000 men, he said to Congress: 

" 1 cannot recomineiid too strongli/ to your consideration the j)la)t submitted by that officer [the Secretary of 
War]/(y;' the organizutiun- of the militia of the United States." 

Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Poinsett have both, at the instance of Mr. Ritchie, greatly falsified 
the origin and object of that " plan," in order to extricate themselves from the embarrassment 
it has thrown them into with the people, who shudder at the idea of an enormous armed force 
in times of peace. I shall not waste time to show the absurdity of those equivocations and falsi- 
fications of dates, &c., but proceed to exhibit, briefly, the objects of so immense an armed force, 
to be distributed, in proportion to population, throughout the country. 

Having made pretty clean business of destroying the commerce of the country by their finan- 
cial blunders and quack experiments upon the banking institutions, the revenue from imports, 
they begin to perceive, is insuHicient to defray the current expenses of the fJoveriiment, and that 
direct taxation and excises will, of necessity, have to be resorted to, whether these consequences 
formed a part of their original design against the United States Bank or not. Preparatory to the 
latter measure, the process of assessing the property of every description throughout the United 
State.s, by the census-takers, has been ordered, so as to embody the necessary information on 
which to compute and levy a direct tax. This project had been progressing with but little 
agitation of the public mind, until the new plan of an additional armed force of 200,000 men, 
and the demi-official insinuations of Messrs. Rhett and Pickens of South Carolina, and Mr. 
Jones of New York, induced some of the friends of liberty to apprehend that there was some 
ground of alarm. 

It now appears that the object of the armed force of 200,000 men is in part to enforce the collec- 
tion of the direct tax, should it meet resistance, as it surely would, in some parts of this yet inde- 
pendent country. I subjom the testimony in an extract from the "Gaspee Torch-light." 

" Isaac Hill, now receiver-general for NevC'Endand, in a political lecture delivered before the Van Buren asso- 
ciation of Providence (1\. I.) last March, declared 'that the expenses of the General Government shoiihl be [laid by 
a direct tax upon properly.' He proclaimed this as one of the final measures of the administration parly. Thai 
there should be no mistake about this mailer, we, socm after the delivery of that lecuire, and while the declarations 
of Mr. Hill were fresh in the recollection of all, obtained the following certificate, signed by eight highly respecta- 
ble gentlemen of this city, who heard the lecture ; which certificate was, last April, published in a communication 
of oiirs in the -Providence Journal. It was not then, has not since, and cannot now, with truth, be denied : 

' '-Providence, Marc/i 25, 18-JO. 

" ' We, the undersigned, freemen of this city, hereby certify that we attended a 1 dure delivered liy Isaac Hill, 
of New Hampshire, before and at llic request «f the Demesrati'c Association of said city, in the masonic hall of Prov- 
idence, on the evening of the sixth instant; and that, in said lecture,said Isaac Hill did state positively and distinct- 
ly Ihe following to be among the true principles of genuine Van Buren democracy, viz : 

" ' 1. The ahuliiion. not only of all protective duties, but of all import duties, aiid the abolition of the whole cu»- 
tsra-house system. 



'• '2. Thai Ihe expenses of the General Uovpnimenl shuuld be paid by a direct tax upon property, &c. 

" ' 3. That gold and silver was the only currency which the General Government had the const iiulional puwer to 
provide for tlie people of this country ; and that Congress ha'.l no power to create a system of national currency and 
exchanges by means of a national bank, (such as Washington recommended in l^Bljand Madison approved in 1816.) 

" '4. "That all distribution acts were wrong, and calculated to corrupt the States and the people, though he did 
not attempt to show why the money should be more corrupting in their hands than in the hands of the General Gov- 
ernment. 

'• ' 5. That no division of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the several States ouglit therefore to 
be made or allowed to be made by the General Government. * 

" ' 6. He boasted that his Van Buren friends in New Hampshire had attained to that happy state of democratic 
purity and perfection, that they could now take strong and decided ground in favor of the above principles and 
measures of tlie Van Buren party — that they were opposed to a tariflf— opposed to a national bank— opposed lo any 
division of the proceeds of ihe sales of the public lands* among the several States. 

" ' We understoood Mr. Hill to distinctly lay down the above principles and doctrines as the true principles of 
the present Van Buren democratic party. ■ BENONI COOKK. JOSEPH SWEET. 

T. D. GOODHUE. N. S. DRAPER. 
WlSl. J. HARRIS, MARTIN ROBINSON. 
GEO. W. TYLER. JuHN L. NOYES.' " 

But to insure the obedience of the armed force thus proposed, and prevent them from co-op- 
erating with their fellow-citizens against federal misrule and oppression, they are, according to 
the plan of the President and Mr. Poinsett, to he subjected to "the regulations of the army." 
Now, if this does not constitute that armed force a part of the standing army, then they are still 
entitled to be called citizen-militiamen. It then results that, if the President may thus avoid the 
odium of proposing a standing army of 200,000 men, he must encounter the odium, not less 
embarrassing, of reviving the "sedition law" among us, to the extent of the application proposed 
of those regulations of the army, of which the Jifth, sixth, and ?iinth articles are more oppres- 
sive to the citizen than the "sedition law," and could only be politic as regulations oi an army 
in time of war, viz : 

" Art. 5. Any ofHcer or soldier who shall use contemptuous or disrespectful words against the President of the 
United Stales, aiiainsi the Vice President thereof, against the Congress, or any of the United States in whicli they 
may be quartered, if a commissioned officer, shall be cashiered, or punished as a court-martial shall direct; if a non- 
commissioned officer or soldier, shall siitTer such punishment as shall be inflicted on him by the judgment of a cour 
martial. 

" Art. 6. Any officer or soldier who shall behave himself with contempt or disrespect towards his commanding of- 
ficer shall be punished according to the nature of his offence, by the judgment of a court martial." 

'' Article 9. Any officer or soldier who sliall strike his superior olFicer, or draw or lift up any weapon or offer any 
violence against him, being in the execution of his office, on any pretence whatever, or shall disobey any lawful 
command of his superior olBcer, shall'suffpr death, or such punishment as shall, according lo the nature of his offence, 
be inflicted upon him by the sentence of a court-martial." 

Suffice it to say that similar offences of " contemptuous writing, speaking, or publishing, 
against the President, the Congress," or other authorities, "with the inti'Ution to defame or 
bring them into disrepute, " were punishable by thk sedition law with " fine not exceeding 
two thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding tiuo years." Thus, it is placed beyond 
the reach of the most daring mendacity to deny, with semblance of truth or credibility, that the 
President has proposed to organize a standing army of 200,000 men, or to .revive the "sedition 
law" to that extent, but in a more tyrannical form than ever. 

Let us now, in the last place, pay our respects to Mr. Van Buren's further agency in bringing 
his " regency spoils system" to embrace the " Appointing Powrr" of the Federal Government, 
that " directress of the whole" system of spoils, by whicli, after the example of those demagogues 
who subverted the Greek republics more than 2,000 years ago, he has made " politics a trade, 
and the commonwealth a i^JOj'/." Under the "magic direction" of Mr. Van Buren, (as his 
biographer terms it,) the same men who contrived those bills and report above quoted, with their 
party associates in the Senate, took early opportunity to reserve the spoils of office, that vacancies 
and other means afforded, for the disposal of the coming administration of Andrew Jackson ; and 
thus tfiaterially aided, by a Senatorial lead, in tempting General Jackson from the broad high- 
way, the long beaten track of Republicanism, which he had pledged himself to follow, in ex- 
terminating the monster, " party spirit;" fur example : 

When the nomination of the honorable John J. Crittenden was made to the Senate, on the 
18th Deceiiiber, 1828, to fill a vacancy on the bench of the Supreme Court, it was ordered, by a 
party vote, to lie on the table ; where it did lie, till General Jackson, nearly four months after, 
had an opportunity to fill the vacancy by the appointment of Judge McLean. 



* " In regard to the disposal of the public lands," says Holland, Rage 23S, '■' a topic ofereat interest and great diffi- 
culty, the pillowing remarks of Mr. Van Buren were made on a motion to ask for information, in the Senate, May 
18, 18-26 : 

"Mr, Van Buren said." * ♦ * " No man could render the country a greater service than he who 
should devise some plan by which the United States might be relieved from the ownership of this property, by some 
equitable mode. He would vote for a proposition to vest ih ■ lands in the Stales in which they stood, on some just 
and equitable terms, as related to the other States in the confederacy. He hoped that, after having full information 
on the subject, they would be able to effect that great object, He believed that if those lands were disposed of at 
once to the several Slates il would be .suiisf.ictory lo all I" 

A more visionary politician, setting al naught all the wisest counsels and acts of our ancestors, never lived. The 
States, severally, once owned these lands, but to settle and harmonize their possible conflicting interests, nobly 
surrendered ihem to the common stock, to the Union; and l\Ir, Van Buren's proposition would now involve a great- 
er discord than could possibly have arisen out of the lormer conc'ition of iliis property. Indeed, it seemeth that 
nothing is good till it is remodeled by Mr, Van Buren ! ! Thus it is with all auACKS ! ! ! 



It would seem that the glorious period for which Mr. Van Buren recommended his friends at 
Albany to live in hope, and not he disheartened, uas now beaming on his gladdened vision ', 
and the whole country sadly knows how he regaled liimsclf and his spoils party, when the day 
of his long desired fortunes was confirmed. Among his first acts, when he became Secretary of 
State, as a personal rewiird for his influence in giving the whole electorial vote of New York to 
General Jackson, or in discharge of ^ political debt to the State for the same service, was that 
prescriptive measure of removing, at a sweep, nearly all the clerks of the State Department, 
among whom were Mr. Fendall, Mr. Slade, Mr. Thruston, Mr. Brown, Mr. Smith, with some 
three or four others from the Patent Office, and tilling their places with party favorites, as did 
his exemplar, Amos Kendall, in the Fourth Auditor's olhce. 

Shortly after this commencement, Mr. Van Buren showed his alacrity at the work of desola- 
tion, by his injiuence in another department, the Post Office, tiie only other that adopted his ex- 
cesses. It was scarcely known to a spoils (riend of his in Louisiana that he was appointed 
Secretary of State, when that friend, a Mr. Overton, addressed him a letter dated 21st March,, 
1829, requesting his influence in procuring the removal of certain officers in that department; to 
which Mr. Van Buren returned the following answer, expressed in a breath, dated April 20, 1829. 
(S e speech af Mr. Slade, of Vt., iti Gales Sf Seutons Reg. of Debates, vol. 8, part 2, p. 2794.) 

" My dear sir : I have the honor of acknowledging the receipt of yours of the i21st uUimo, and of inforining 
you that the removals and api'oinlments which you rec(5nnnended were made on the day your letter was receivp'f 
"With respect, your friend, &c. " M. VAN BUREN." 

The guillotine never severed the head from the body of its victims in the terrific days of Dan- 
ton, Marat, and Robespierre, with equal haste, in its greatest thirst for blood. 

If these instances did not suffice to show that the whole mania of the spoils system, practised 
in the name of General Jackson, was of Van Buren origin, as he was of General Jackson's ad- 
ministration " the spirit and the creator," I could at least give ample testimony of his improve- 
ment upon it, by his practice since he has, by the foulest means, succeeded to the Presidency. 
His wanton removals of faithful and capable officers, and his appointment of party favorites in 
their places, some of them known to be infamous, his retention of notorious defaultery, and his 
declaration that it is less objectionable for individuals to use the public money, [by their own as- 
sumption,] than that corporate institutions should use it, [by the permission of the Government,] 
and, finally, his further declaration that "rotation in office was a part of his system," i e. to 
make dismissals and appointments at his will and pleasure, on spoils principle, without regard 
to the good of the public service, would 'sufficiently establish his hearty adoption, if there were 
not already exhibited full evidence of his paternity, of the whole system. 

Without dwelling, in detail, upon ihe thousands of examples of this abuse of usurped power,, 
the doctrine o{ Executive right under which they have been practised, taken with its fearless and 
wanton execution, proves that the money poweb, not only to the full extent of the appropria- 
tions for the civil list, but for disbursements of every description whatever, for the current ex- 
penses of the Government, is assumed and exercised by the President, by virtue of his control of 
the tenure of office of those receiving and disbursing the same: and not only this, in its simplr 
amount, but the same infinitely niuliiplied, inasmuch as when the appointments and salaries^' 
are once assigned to officers, these being tenants-at-wiil of the President, he exercises the con- 
trol of the money power not only to that amount, when first bestowed, but in the (compound 
ratio of its perpetual renewability every instant afterwards, the actual amount of which, in thr 
hands of such a man as Mr. Van Buren, cannot he computed by the greatest adept in arithmeti- 
cal calculations. 

It would not be inappropriate here to ask, whence Mr. Van Buren derives the "H>:MOTise 
POWER 1" It is not granted to the President by the constitution — and Mr. Van Buren is the 
advocate of a strict construction of powers, according to the letter: if it be alleged that it has; 
been acted on long enough to give it the weight of an express grant — which is not true — yet the 
usage of precedent has no authority w ith him, for he condemns all who have been acting, for a 
half century, on the principles of construction by which our whole financial system was put in 
motion. Nor does ho hold with the doctrine of any power whatever being inherent in an office ; 
for this doctrine was very ingeniously (if without sense) opposed by him, in the discussion of 
the famous Foote's resolution, when he denied the inherent right of the presiding officer of the 
Senate to call to order, however disorderly any member might be on the floor of the Senate. If, 
then, ihe.rrmoving pov^er be not granted to the President by the constitution — if it be not an 
implied and inherent executive right — if it cannot be sanctioned by mere usnge and precedent for 
a half century-^I would ask, again, whence is it derived 1 

I have said, parenthetically, that the nEMovixc poweh was not considered to be a legitimate 
or constitutional power of the Executive, by most of the wisest and purest statesmen, in the 
enriier days of the republic. When the subject of the removing power was under discussion 
in the House of Representatives, June IGth and 17th, 1789, (being the 1st session of the 1st 
Congress,) it was ably argued (hat it was co-ordinate with the appointing power, and that 
the Senate had the same right to participate with the President in the one as in the other. This 
diecu-ssion took place on " The Bill for eatabliihing an Exemtive Department^ to be deno->ni- 



37 

nated the Department of Fo7-ei<pi Affairs." The first clause, after stating the title of the officer 
and his duties, had these words : " To be removable from office by the President' of the United 
Slates." 

It is obvious to every discernment that the insertion of this clause fully declared the absence 
of a constitutional or inherent power in the Executive to make removals, which would render 
this clause superfluous, or rather a negation of that power, when not recognised by law. Many 
members who denied the existence of the power were- averse to grantmg it in any case, and 
therefore proposed to strike from the bill this clause granting the power in this case. It was, 
however, retained as a legislative grant of power over the tenure of this office by a vote of 34 
to 20. 

'* Mr. White, of Virginia, said : The constitution gives the President the power of nomi- 
' .VATr>Kj and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appointino to office. Ai 

• I conceive the power of appointing and dismissing to be united in their natures, and a prin- 
' ciple that never was called in question in any government, I am adverse to that part of the 
' clause which subjects the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to be removed at the will of the Presi- 
'dent." ********** 

* * *« Mr. Madison, of Virginia, said: * * The constitution affirms that the execu- 
' tive power shall be vested in the President. Are there exceptions to this proposition ? Yes, 
' there are. The constitution says that, in appointing to office, the Senate shall be associated 
' with the President, unless in the case of inferior offices when the law shall otherwise direct. 
' Have we a right to extend this exception ] I believe not." * * "The question now re- 
' solves itself into this: Is the power oi displacing an executive power]" [Having already said 

• it was a power " incident to that department," he went oa to say :] " I conceive that if any 
' powA- whatever is in its nature executive, it is the power of appointing, overseeing, and con- 
' trolling those who execute the laws. If the constitution had not qualified the power of the 

• President in appointing to office, by associating the Sexatf. with iiiin in that business, would 
' it not be clear that he would have the right, bt/ virtue of his executive power, to make such 
' appnintments?'" &c. &.c. 

Hence, Mr. Madison concluded that, as the constitution did not also expressly qualifv the re- 
moving power, by associating the Senate with the President in that regard, this " inherent power" 
is self-operative in the Executive : to which Mr. Jackson replied with great force and resistless 
power of argument; from which the following extract may be deemed as prophetic: 

"Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, said: As a constitutional question, it is of great moment, and 
' worthy of full discussion. I am, sir, a friend to the full exercise of all the powers of Govern- 

• ment, and deeply impressed with the necessity there exists of having an energetic Executive. 

• But, friend as I am to the efficient Government, I value the liberties of my feliow-citizrns be- 
'yond every other consideration ; and, where I lind them endangered, I am willing to forego 
' eveify other blessing to secure them. I hold it as good a maxim as it is an old one, 'of two 
' evils to choose the least.' 

"It has been mentioned that in ail Governments the executive magistrate had the [inherent] 
' power of dismissing officers under hi:n. This may hold good in Europe, where nionarchs 
'claim theii" powers Jure divino, but it never can be admitted in America, under a constitution 
'delegating enumerated powers. It requires more than a mere ipsi dixit Xo demonstrate that 
' any power is, in its nature, exkcctiye, and consequently given to the President of the United 
'Slates by the present constitution. But, if this power is incident to the executive branch of 
' the Government, it does not follow that it vests in the President alone, because he alone does 
'not possess all executive powers. The constitution has lodged the power of forming treaties, 
'and ail executive business, I presume, connected therewith, in the President, but it is qualified 
' 'by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,' provided two-thirds of the Senate agree 
'therein. From this, I infer that those arguments are dune away, which the gentleman from 
'Virginia (Mr. Madison) used to prove, that it was contrary to the principles of the consiitu- 
' tion that we should blend the executive and legislative powers in the same body." * » * 

" It has been observed that the President ought to have this power to remove a man when he 
' becomes obnoxious to the people or disagreeable io himself. Ahe we then to have all the 
' OFFICERS TH -. M KK B cuisATURKS OF THE PRESIDENT 1 Tkis tlilrst (f powBr wHl introduce a 
' Treasury bench into the House, and we shall itave iiiinisters obtrude upon us to govern and 
' direct the measures of the legislature, and to support the influence of their master ,■ and shall 
' we establish a different influence between the people and the President 1 I suppose these cir- 
' curastances must take place, because they have taksn place in other countries. The executive 
' power falls to the ground in England, if it cannot be supported by the Parliament ,• therefore, 
' a high game of corruption is played, and a majori.y secured to the ministry by the introduction 
' of placemen and pensioners. 

"The gentlemen have brought forward arguments drawn from possibility. It is said, that 
' our secretary of foreign affdirs may become unfit for his office by a fit of lunacy, and therefore 
' a silent remedy should be applied. It is true, such a case may happen, but it may also happen 
' where there is no power of removing. Suppose the President ihould be taken with a fit of 



38 

^ lunacy, would it be possible by such arguments to remove him 1 I apprehend he must remain 

• in office during his tour years. Suppose the Senate should he i<eized with a Jit of lunacy, and 
' it was to extend to the House of Representatives, what could the people do but f.xduiie this 

• MAD CoNouEss TILL Tin: TEKM OF THEiH KLKCTioNs KXFiuxD? We havc secn a King of 
' England in an absolute fit of lunacy, which produced an interregnum in the Government. 
' The same may happen here with respect to our President; and, although it is improbable that 

• the majority of both Houses of Congress may be in that situation, yet it is by no means im- 

• possible! [Does not the present locotoco majority of the present Congress verify thisl] But 

• gentlemen have brought forward another argument with respect to the judges. It is said they 
' are to hoM their offices during good behaviour. I agree that ought to be the case. But is not 
' a judge liable to the act of God as well as any other officer of the Government 1 However 
'great his legal knowledge, his judgement, and integrity, it may be taken from him at a stroke, 

• and he rendered the most unfit of all men to fill such an important office. But can you re- 
' move him ! Not for this cause; it is impossible, because madness is no treason, crime, or 
' misdemeanor. * * * * * ** * * 

" But let me ask gentlemen if it is impossible to place their officers in such a situation as to 
' deprive them of their independency and firmness ; for, Z apprehend it is not intended to stop 
' with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Let it be remendiered that the constitution gives the 
' President the command of the militarv. If (in addition to this) you give him complete power 

• over THE MAN with the STRONG BOX, he ivill have the liberty of America under his 
'thumb. It is easy to see the evil which may result. If he wants to establish an arbitrary au- 

• thority, and finds the SECRETARY OF FINANCE not inclined to second his endeavors, 
« (jj^ he has nothing more to do than to remove him, and get one appointed of principles 

• MOKE congenial WITH HIS OWN. Then, gays he, I have got the army ; let me but have the 
' money, and I will establish iny throne upon the ruins of your visionary republic ! Let no 
' gentleman say I am contemplating imaginary dangers — the mere chmieras of a heated brain. 
•Behold the baleful influence of the hotal puehooative! All officers, till lately, held their 
' commissions during \he pleasure of the Crown." 

* * * "I agree that this is the hour [the 1st session of the 1st Congress] in which wc 
' ought to establish our Government ; but it is an hour in which we should be wary and cautious, 
'especially in what respects the executive magistrate. With him [Washington] every power 

• may be safely lodged. Black, indeed, is the heart of that man who even suspects him to be 

• capable of abusing them. But, alas ! he cannot be with us forever ; he is liable to the vicissi- 
' tudes of life; he is but mortal, and though I contemplate it with great regret, yet 1 know the pe- 
' riod must come which will separate him from his country ; and can we know the virtues or vices 
' of his successor in a very few years 1 May not a man with a Pandora's box in his breast come 
' into power, and give us sensible cause to lament our present confidence and want of foresight 1" 

"Mr. Page, of Virginia, said: I venture to assert that this clause contains in it the seeds 
' OF ROYAL PREROGATIVE. If gentlemen lay such stress on the energy of Government, 
' I beg them to consider how far this doctrine may go. Every thing that has been said in favor 
' of energy in the Executive may go to the destruction of freedom, and establish a DESPOT- 
« ISM. This very energy so much talked of has led many patriots to the bastilk, to the 

• BLOCK, and to the halter. If the Chief Magistrate can take a man away from the head of a 

• departiDent, ivithout assigning any reason, he may as well be invested with power, on certain 
' occasions, to take awat his existence. But, will you contend that this idea is consonant 
'with the principles of a free Government, where no man ought to be condemned unheard, nor 
' till after a solemn convictian of guilt on a fair and impartial trial ] It would, in my opinion, 

• BE BETTER TO SUFFER FOR A TIME THE MISCHIEF ARISING FROM THE CONDUCT OF A BAD 
'officer, than ADMIT PniNCIPLES AVHICH WOULD LEAD TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF DES- 

• POTIC PREROGATIVES," &c. 

The reader knows full well how truly have these royal, these despotic prerogatives, been re- 
alized, and that to the fullest extent, by the encroachments and usurpations of the Executive, 
during the last ten or twelve years. Now although these usurpers have professed the doctrine of 
" strict construction of the constitution," that instrument confers no express power oi removal 
so much exercised by them ; and although Mr. Madison contended that this power " is incident 
to the executive office," and essential to the responsibility of the President in seeing that the laws 
be faithfully executed by inferior executive officers, as he expressed it in the House of Repre- 
sentatives in 1789, and though General Washington, Mr. .1. Adams, .Mr. Jeflerson, Mr. Mon- 
roe, and Mr. .1. Q. Adams, must have concurred with Mr. Madison as to this " incidental pow- 
er" to enable the President to insure the efficnry of the public service, under his supervision, as 
each of them made a few removals on that principle, yet none of them abused the power by 
perverting it to the illegitimate purposes of proscription, favoritism, or any other uses than those 
purely emanating from the dictates of the public good — a consideration that seems to have had 
no part in governing the transfer of the spoUs system to the General Government under the pre- 
sent dynasty, contrary to their profe.s.«ed principles of literal construction of powers. 



39 

• 

But it is proper to say, as a part of the secret history of this transfer of the spoila of office to 
the General Government, Mr. Van Buren and his coadjutors met with considerable difficulty in 
the commencement of his plans in 1829, on account of the greater favor o( Southern {neji and; 
Southern principle! at the time with General Jackson. None of the other Secretaries had yet 
done much in the way of proscription except Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Barry ; and, on account 
of those removals that were made, Mr. Ritchie, of the Richmond Enquirer, a supporter of the 
administration, was continually bearding the President. Among the repeated instances of his 
setting his countenance against all removals, except fur good cauae, and tvitk explanatory rea- 
sons, it will be sufficient to note, from the columns of the Enquirer, the following : 

May 5, 1829. — " We are no advocates for the removal of good, faithful, and meritorious 

* officers, who have not been warm political partisans, but we are opposed to all corruption. It 
' is peculiarly incumbent upon the present administration to supersede all faithless officers, to 

* look keenly into the departments, remove every complaint, and cleanse the Augean stables of 

* abuses." 

May 12. — " Mr. Niles objects to members of Congress being appointed to executive offices, 

* except of the highest grade, in which we have uniformly agreed with him. * * We 
' see no occasion to change this opinion. * * The moment he [the. President] appoints 

* members to ministerial offices, as postmasters, collectors, auditors, &c., it tviU.be time for the 
'people to speak out." 

Jdne 5, '39. — " There have been some more recent removals at Washington. Justice re- 

* quires that the reasons of them should be understood before we pass sentence upon them," &c. 

June 5. — " We hsive imderstood all the circumstances under which .Mr. Campbell received 
' the appointment, (of Treasurer,) and it is doing him even less than justice to say, that there 
' is Nothing in the manner in which he obtained it, at which the slightest exception could be 
' taken by the most fastidious opponent." 

Juyy. 19. — "Mr. Campbell tiid not 5ffA- /o turn Mr. Clarke out. He did not know that 
' Mr. ('larke was to be removed — he had not any idea of becoming treasurer. When he was 

* told Mr. Clarke is certainly to go out — will you accept the appointment 1 The most fastidious 
' delicacy could not take exception at the proposition. We knoiv this to be the fact," &c. 

On another occasion, about this time, Mr. Ritchie went so far as to twit the administra- 
tion over the shoulders of Mr. Berrien and Mr. Van Buren, (fortifying himself at the same 
time with the assertion of popular discontent in Virginia,) saying, that "Mr. Berrien and 
jMr. Van Buren could tell the National Journal why Virginians do not wish to turn one 
another out of office." From this side-blow by Mr. Ritchie, taken in connexion with his other 
oblique censures of removals and appointmeiits, it is obvious there must have been some private 
inter-communications between him and Mr. Van Buren, deprecatory of the spoils system, which, 
however uncongenial with the spoiler's views, he had to endure in silence, under the terrors of 
popular wrath in Virginia, and betake himself again to ho])e in the future — regarding, at the 
same time, with aggravated chagrin, the paramount interest that General Jackson then felt for 
Mr. Calhoun's pretensions to the succession ; for, Mr. Calhoun had withdrawn from the Presi- 
dential contest, in 1824, had thrown his interest into the scales of General Jackson, and had 
continued to advocate his cause till it was successful in 1828: jet hoping to attain the high 
objects of his own ambition, as the successor of General Jackson, after his enjoyment of one 
term. "But against this consummation of his wishes (sajjs the Political Mirror, page 124) 
all the powers of the black art had combined. The potent magician had woven his effective 
spell." Accordingly, after hesitating and pondering upon the policy of withdrawing frojii the 
Depaitment of State, he archly conchided that, "opposed by the deep-rooted popularity of Gen- 
eral Jackson, all hopes of success were vain ;" he, therefore, resolved to keep his position, as 
the most propitious; thence to avail himself both of General Jackson's affections and his resent- 
ments. He immedintely set about to court the former, by unremitting attentions and assiduities 
towards the lady of General Jackson's most favored Secertary, the Secretary of War: and to 
arouse the latter passion, "Mr. Van Buren sprung a mine upon Mr. Calhoun, which had been 
long dug beneath the feet of him who was the only rival in the Jackson party who could give 
Mr. Van Buren uneasiness." 

"Tt was already felt (says the Political Mirror, page 125) that the influence of (humbug) re- 
' form had given to the President a potential, if tiol ^. co?iclusive, voice in designating his succes- 

* sor. His favor was as much to be sought, as his enmity was to he deprecated. It was, there- 
' fore, a desirable stroke of policy for a Presidential aspirant to gain the one, and to turn the other 
' upon his rival. Mr. Van Buren succeeded in effecting this liy a coup de niaitre which has 
' rarely been surpassed. In it, he exhibited the consummation of art which conceals art ; for 
' whilst lie accomplished an effective work, scarce the mark of a tool is visible. The work as- 
' sumes, what it is affirmed to be, the happy ministration of Providence. We will endeavor to 
' narrate the particulars of this event, (says the Mirrir,) preserving chronological order. 

"Mr. James A. Hamilton [afterwards Secretary of State, {'ad interim,') and then United 

• States attorney for the southern district of New York] was delegated in 1827 to represent 
' the New York Tammany Society, at New Orlean.=, in the celebration of the 8th of January, 



40 

' 1823, afthat place. General Jackson had been invited by the Legislature of Louisiana to at- 

• tend the celebration. Mr. Hamilton joined the General at Nashville, whence he proceeded 
' with him and his suite. During the voyage, there was much conversation among the Gen- 
' eral's friends, in relation to various charges against the General, which the Presidential can- 
' vass had originated or revived ; and, particularly, as to the unfriendly cour.se Mr. Crawford 
' was supposed to have taken towards him in relation to the Seminole war. [The reader 
« will observe that Mr. Crawford's views of the General's conduct in that war were known, or 

• supjiosed to be known. The application to be iriade to him, therefore, could not be for information 
' of /a* views and conduct, but of the views and conduct of others. If of others, of whom, save 
' Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Adams, or Mr. Wirt \ Mr. Adams's were fully known — Mr. Wirt's were now 

• unimportant. But those of .Mr. Calhoun were interesting to the General, and to Mr. Hamilton 
' as the udji-dive of Mr. Van Buren. These circumstances raised the violent presumption that 

• it was a knowledge of Mr. Calhoun's conduct that was to be sought.] It being understood 
« that Mr. Hamilton, on his return, passing through Georgia, would avail himself of the oppor- 
' tunity to visit Mr. Crawford, Major Lewis desired him, or Mr. Hamilton oHered, to ascertain, 
' trul?, what occurred in Mr. Monroe's cabinet deliberations, in relation to a proposition snppos- 

• ed to have been made to arrest General Jackson for his conduct in that war, and to inform him 
' of the result, in order, as Mr. Hamilton understood, that Major Lewis might be prepared to 

• defend the General against attack upon this point. 

" On his arrival at Sparta, Georgia, Mr. Hamilton, as he declares, ascertaining that Mr. 
' Crawford dwelt si.vly miles on the left of his route, and might probably be absent from home, 
' resolved to push on to Savannah ; thereby to take a detour of 150 miles to the right, avoiding 
' one of 60 to the left, by a road, at that season of the year, much worse than that which he de- 
' clined. At Savannah, Mr. Hamilton, under date of 25th January, wrote to Mr. Forsyth, then 
' Governor of Georgia, whom he had seen at Milled gevillc, on his ivay to Sparta, requesting him 
« to procure from Mr. Crawford the desired information. Mr. Forsyth replied, February 8th, 
' 1828, thus: 

" 1 had a long ccniversalion willi Mr. Crawfonl, and afterwards read him your letter. By his authority, I stale, in 
reply to your inquiry, that, at a meetinfr of Mr. Monroe's cabinet to discuss the course to be pursued towards Spain, in 
consequence of General Jackson's proceedings in Florida, during the Seminole war, Mr. Calhoun, the Secretary of 
the War Department, suljmiited to, and urged upon, the President, the propriety and necessity of arresting and iry- 
ino- General Jackson. Mr. Monroe was very much annoyed by it; expressed a belief that such a step would noi 
meet the public ap|irobaljon ; that General Jackson had performed too much public service to be treated as a younger 
or subaltern officer might without shocking public opinion. Mr. Adams spoke with great violence against the pro- 
posed arrest, and justified the General throughout, vehemently urging the President to make the cause of the Gen- 
eral that of the administration." 

* * * [The Mirror, after stating many other facts, part of them respecting a correspondence 
between Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Calhoun in coHnexion with this subject, goes on to say, p. 128 :] 
"Mr. Hamilton was, at this time, 1st March, 1828, in possession of the following facts, most 
' important in their nature to a skilful politician. [Mr. Hamilton was then, as now, the pollt- 

• ical, personal, and interested friend of Mr. Van Buren, and Mr. Van Buren had every need 
' which a skilful politician could have for such facts, to be used at an opportune occasion.] Mr. 
' Hamilton knew, and we cannot for a moment doubt that Mr. Van Buren also then kneiv, that 
' Mr. Crawford avowed that Mr. Calhoun had suggested the arrest, a court of inguiri/, or pro- 
' ceeding of so)7ie sort, against General Jackson for his conduct in the Seminole war; and that 
' Mr. Calhoun had denied that any measures against the Getieral had been proposed by any one 
' in the Cabinet." * * " We have one fact yet to mention, which we think may have much 
' hearing on the case. Messrs. Van Buren and Cambreleng, in their Southern progress in the 
' spring of 1827, had spent several days with Mr. Crawford, whose jnincipal friend Mr. Van 
' Buren had been in the election of 1824; and, as Mr. Crawford was in the habit of speaking of 

• these cabinet aftUirs, and of Mr. Calhoun, whom he most cordially hated and vengefully pur- 
' sued, it becomes highly probable, almost certain, that he communicated to his dearest friends 
» [Van Buren and Cambreleng] the inconsistency, as he supposed, of his enemy, in supporting 
•for President the man whom he had proposed to arrest, and probably to degrade. '^ ♦ » » 
" Suppo.-iing Mr. Van Buren to have been then possessed of the facts, coinciding so well with 
' his interests, we might, had he not denied it, presume him to have been the puo«i>TEn of Mr. 
' Hamilton's otherwise very extraordinary course."' 

"But, if these facts might prostrate Mr. Calhoun, why not use them at the time? 'I'he re- 
' ply is obvious. They could not be used with effect. General Jackson was not President — 

• he might not be ; ami to make liim so, .Mr. Calhoun's interest might be indispensable. Neither 
' the chief nor Mr. V^an IJuren would have ventured to quarrel with the Vice President at this 
' time." * » • " Until the winter of l829-';?0, [these important facts, known to the friends 
'of General Jackson, remained uiuioticed,] when the same Mr. Hamilton who had so success- 
< fully and accidentalli/ put the Vice President at issue with Mr. Crawford, called on Mr. For- 
' syth, then a member of the Senate, and requested him to give to the President tbe information 
' he had given to him, (Mr. Hamilton.) * » * "Mr. Forsyth [from certain considerations 
« was induced] not to give the information, without Mr. Crawford's assent. Mr. Crawford was, 
'therefore, ap()lied to in form, and hi>; answer, dated 3.0th April, 1830, was obtained, confirm- 



41 

• 
' ing and enlarging (he details given by Mr. Forsyth in his letter to Mr. Hamilton of the 8th of 
' February, 1828. The roi-T of Mr. Cuawfoud's lettkh, di:ly iKUTiFiiiii, was furnisheii 
'to General Jackson on thf. 12tu Mat, 1830." 

The sagacious author of the Political Mirror says : "Supposing Mr. Van Buren to have been 
in possession of these facts, we might presume him to have been \he prompter of Mr. Hamilton's 
otherwise extraordinary course." " But," says the Mirror, p. 132, ''It is the privilege of the 
accused, in all cases, nay, custom makes it almost a duty, to plead ' not guilty' before a popu- 
lar or judicial inhnnaX; but the question still remains, whether the evidence is sufficient to con- 
vict ?" The public have some recollection of the success, in regard to the views of Mr. Van 
Buren, with which this quarrel was waged between General .Jackson and Mr. Calhoun. All 
the details of this political manceuvre constitute one of the most singular passages in the history 
of court intrigue. A perusal of the whole statement, from which the above extracts are made, is 
richly worth the purchase of this precious volume. Shortly after that dexterous achievement, 
Mr. Van Buren withdrew from the State Department, further to strengthen the advantages he 
had gained in his triumph over Mr. Callwun, in regard to his future prospects for the succession 
to the Presidency. On this subject the Mirror, page 137, says: 

"General Jackson's Cabinet was composed of one Van Buren man, [the little magician him- 
*self,] four Jackson men, and one Calhoun man. Now, had all these men been earnestly dis- 
* posed to promote the public service, instead of their private ends, there was nothing in their 



.' Buren, who, from long experience, well knew the value of these, resolved to ivrcst them from 
' hands ivhich would employ them adversely to himself ,- and to such a purpose [adversely to 

* himself] it was supposed Messrs. Ingham, Branch, and Berrien were devoted. He had just 

* succeeded in overthrowing a powerful rival, and the dispersion of these enemies seemed, as it 

* truly was, a trivial matter. On the 11th April, 1831, Mr. Van Buren took the new and suc- 

* cessful course of sacrificing his enemies, by an apparent offering up of himself; addressing a 

* letter to the President, he declared ' he felt it his duty to retire from the office to which the 

* President's confidence and partiality had called him.' " [Mr. Eaton had tendered his resigna- 
tion on the 7th April.] 

It appears that these gentlemen, in their letters of resignation, assigned such reasons for so 
doing as were supposed would be satisfactory to the public, and cover hidden motives and precon- 
certed arrangements. Gen. Jackson, also, to put the final gloss over the whole affair, assigned 
his reasons for reorganizing his cabinet. The Mirror says "there is a total want of keeping be- 
tween the reasons assigned [by Gen. Jackson] and those given by the Secretary of State and the 
Secretary of War." The same author further adds, page HO : 

"That the true motive for breaking up the cabinet' were not those assigned by the President; 
' that it was an act premeditated ; and that the resignations of Messrs. Van Buren and Eaton 
' were the consequences and not the cause of the determination, we have further evidence in the 
' confessions of the President and the wily Secretary, [viz:] 

" The President having invited to a private audience one of the secretaries, (Mr. Branch, 

* whom he was about to dismiss,) for the purpose of making known to him the new arrangements 
' on which he had determinied, said, with an air of diplomatic caution and studied precision, 'Sir, 

* I submit to you two letters which I have received from the Secretary of State and the Secretary 

* of VVar, resigning their respective offices, and ask for them your serious consideration.' 'Sir,' 
' replied the astonished Secretary, ' I am a plain man, and your friend. Our intercourse has been 

* of long duration, and you know that diplomacy is no part of my character or of yours. Be so 
' good, therefore, as to tell me frankly what you intend, and what you desire of me.' J Then, 

* sir, I will inform you that I mean to reorganize my cabinet.' ' Very well, sir; I hope you will 

* profit by the change. I have not been your friend for the sake of office. I wish only to be in- 

* tormed whether my conduct, while in your cabinet, was satisfactory to you.' 'Sir,' said the 

* President, 'I have no fault to find with you.' ' With this assurance,' said the Secretary, ' I 
' am contented ; but allow me to inquire who is to be your Secretary of State V ' Mr. Living- 

* ston,' was the reply. 'Who is to take the Treasury Department 1' 'Mr. McLan.e, now 
' minister in England.' ' Who will occupy the Navy Department V ' Mr. Woodbury.' 'And 
' pray, sir, who is to replace Mr. McLane in England V « Mr. Van Biren.' " 

" Soon after the dissolution of the cabinet, whilst Mr. Van Buren was waiting at New York 

* the arrival of Mr. McLane from England, he replied to the inquiry of a partisan friend — that 
' he had the offer of the mission to the Court of St. James, but bad not yet decided as to the pro- 

* priety of accepting it. His friends, he said, differed as to the policy of his leaving the country 

* at that time, there being some arrangements to make in the republican party, for future opera- 

* tions — and observed that he was anxious to have an interview with Mr. McLane, before de- 

* parture, should he determine to go. Being interrogated as to the real cause of (he dissolution 
' of the cabinet, he answered that Mr. E**** had no agency in the matter; but that it was 

* caused more by the conduct of Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Ingham, it;ho desired the retirement of 



42 

' General Jackson from office at the expiration of the first four years of his term of service, and 

' who had endeavored to consummate their designs by traducing the character of . To 

' the remark that he, Mr. Van Buren, had managed well to pass unscathed through the fiery or- 
' deal, he laughingly replied, 'Yes, I had seen for some two or three months the approach of 
' trouble, and that a dissolution of the cabinet must ensue — the materials being too discordint to 
' continue together in harmony — and, to save myself, I thought it better to retire in time, know- 

' ING THAT IF I LED TlIK WAV THE REST MUST FOLLOW.' " 

Accordingly Mr. Van Buren, in pursuance of the preconcerted arrangement, by which he re- 
duced the whole cabinet to a spoil, and appropriated a slice of $19,000 to himself, (having also 
artfully contrived to interweave into his letter of resignation a nomination of himself for the 
Presidency, as Gen. Jackson's successor, and to obtain the General's sanction of his course,) 
departed for Europe, in the summer of 1831, to represent the United States at the Court of St. 
Jauies, where he had but lately disgraced his country by his diplomatic instructions to Mr. 
McLane. To convict Mr. Van IBuren of this charge ("which was the principal ground of the re- 
jection of his nomination by the Senate at the ensuing session, by the casting vote of Mr. Cal- 
houn, then Vice President) it will be sufficient to contrast his own sentiments, expressed in a 
speech in the Senate in 1827, on the very same subject, with the corresponding passage fn his 
instructions to Mr. McLane in 1829. In his speech in the Senate, the 24th February, 1827, 
upon our negotiations to regain the British colonial trade, he said : 

"In a Government like ours, founded on freedom of thought and action, imposing no neces- 
' sary restraints, and calling into exercise the highest energies of the mind, occasional dillerences 
' of opinion are not only to be expected but to be desired." " But this conflict of opinion should 
« be confined to subjects which concern ourselves. In the collisions which may arise between the 
' United States and a foreign Power, it is our duty to present an unbroken front. Domestic dif- 
• ferences, if they tend to give encouragement to unjust pretensions, should be extinguished or 
' deferred ; and the cause of our Government must be considered as the cause of our country. 
' The humiliating spectacle of a foreign Government speculating for the advantage which it may 
' derive from our dissensions will, I trust, never again be the reproach of the American people ! !" 

Now mark what came directly afterwards from this political impersonation of the grossest con- 
tradictions and inconsistencies, as soon as the fates had put it in his power to act upon this very 
subject of regaining the colonial trade. In his instructions to our minister, dated July 20,- 1829, 
he said : 

"If the omission of this Government to accept the terms proposed, when heretofore offered, be 
' urged as an objection to their adoption now, it will be your duty to make the British Govern- 
' ment sensible of the injustice and inexpediency of such a course. The opportunities which you 
' have derived from a participation in our public councils, as well as other stmrces of information, 
' will enable you to speak with confidence — of the respective parts taken by those to whom the 
' administration of the Government is now committed, in relation to the course heretofore pursued 
' upon the subject of the ' colonial trade.' Their views upon that point have been submitted to the 
' people of the United Slates ; and the counsels by which your conduct is now directed are the re- 
' sullsof the judgment expressed by the oidy earthly triliunal to which the late administration was 
' amenable for its acts !" " To set up the acts of the late administration as the cause of forfeiture of 
' privileges which would otherwise be extended to the people of the United States, would, under 
' existing circumstances, be unjust in itself, and could not fail to excite their deepest sensibility. " 
' " The tone of feeling which a course so unwise and untenable is calcidatcd to produce, would 
' doubtless be greatly aggravated by the consciousness that Great Britain has, by orders in council, 
' opened her colonial ports to Russia and France, notwithstanding a similar omission on their part 
' to accept the terms offered by the act of July, 1825." 

In the name of all that is just and honorable let me ask, was not the last recited fact sufficient 
to satisfy Mr. Van Buren's mind that the same privileges and participations in the colonial trade 
which were extended to Russia and France under similar circumstances, would also, upon 
the customary honorable course of negotiation, be restored to the United Stales, without dis- 
gracing the preceding udministralion, and humiliating the country at the footstool of our ancient 
enemy 1 Not only, then, is Mr. Van Buren coiulcmncd, in advance, by his own judgment ex- 
pressed in 1827, for this anli-patriolic conduct, but manifestly, it was a superfluous excess of 
party spirit, ;is wanton as it was uncalled for. But, nevertheless, it was in perfect good keeping 
with the whole tenor of Mr. Van Buren's political life, from which it would have been a singu- 
lar departure had he not done precisely what he did. The emphatic words of the author of the 
Political .Mirror (p. 16G) declare that "The nomination of Mr. Van Buren was rejected in 
Senate, upon the ground, distinctly put, timt he, ' the Secretary of Slate for the United States 
of .\mcrica, had shown a manifest disposition to establish a distinction between his country and 
his pa-f)/ ; to place that party above the country ,■ to make interest at a foreign court, fur that 
party, rather than /or the country ,■ to persuade the English ministry, and the English monarch, 
that they h?Lf\ an interest in maintaining in the J] m{ed Siatca the ascendency oUhe party to 
which he belonged.'" "Other political sins of the ex-Secretary (says the Mirror) were reviewed 
at this period, and none were more severely reproved than the (juarrel he had caused between 



43 

the President and Vice President, the dispcrsioti of the tirst cabinet, and the introduction of the 
odious system oi proscription (for the exercise of the elective franchise) into the Government of 
the United States — a system drawn from the worst period of the Roman Repubhc, making the 
offices, honors, and dignities of the people, prizes to be won, bouty to be gained, at every presi- 
dential election — producing contests that would be intolerable, and which must result in inex- 
orable despotism." 

This rejection by the Senate, however imperiously called for to vindicate the honor of the na- 
tion against the stigma cast on it by the oflicial oftences of the nominee, nevertheless furnished 
a new pivot on which the wily politician and the abettors of his purpose of spoliations might 
turn their future electioneering operations. Very few persons either in Congress or among the 
multitude of voters had any knowledge of Mr. Van Buren's previous hypocritical and treacher- 
ous political course, by which he had successively wormed himself into high stations — but, re- 
garding him only as the adopted friend of General Jackson, they generally considered the action 
of the Senate more in the light of an insult offered to the venerated chief, than as a merited 
rebuke to a political adcentarer ,- and therefore they were in a state of mind fully predisposed to 
second and adopt any electioneering arrangements to revenge the offended President and bis 
discredited minister, by advancing him to the highest official honors in the gift of his country, 
first by commissioning him to preside over the very body that had recalled him, and, secondly, by 
commissioning him to preside over the whole Union, whose honor he had degraded as the foot- 
ball of his party, to which he has since given her treasury as a spoil. It is obvious, then, that the 
whole popular enthusiasm that was immediately and industriously gotten up by the Executive in- 
fluence, for the tirst time thrown into the political arena, was virtually and substantially io vindi- 
cate, through a generous, deceived, and abused people, at the ballot box, a guilty, condemned, and 
disgraced minister; and this, too, was to be effected by the artifices of Executive and other 
official electioneering, through an organized party press, emanating from the suggestions of the 
offender himself But he succeeded ! and the public now know pretty much of the details by 
which he did succeed ; and, in consequence of the abuses he has practised since his election, 
and the people's present better acquaintance with the dishonorable means by which he has 
enabled himself thus to abuse their confidence, they are now prepared to confirm the rejection of 
the Senate, by ejecting him fVom the Presidency. 

It being consonant with my plan, from the beginniag of tliis review, to let Mr. Van Buren 
pronounce his own sentence of condemnation, as we have seen he has l>cen compelled to do in 
the public prints in more cases than one of late, he shall have an opportunity to do so, once 
more, on the theme of the Third I'eriod of his political career, which no doubt will be his last 
appearance in any political capacity. 



THIRD PERIOD. 



" I allude, sir, lo ilial collision, whicli seems inseparable, from the nature of man, between ihe kights of ihR 
Jew and the many, lo those never-ceasing conflicts between the advocates of the enlargement and concentration 
of POWER on the one hand, and vvs limitation and distribution on the other: conflicts which in England 
created the distinction beticeen Whtgs and Tories— the latter striving by all means within their reach to in- 
crease the INFLUENCE and dominion of the THRONE, at the expense of tlie common People ; and the FoniiEii to 
counteract the exrrlions of their adversaries, by abridging that dominion and influence, for the advancement of 
the rights and consequpnt ameliokation of the conditioiN of the PEOPLE."— (I*a?j Z?M;e«'s speech on F^oote^s 
resolution, session l827~'-28.) 

Mr. Van Buren, while a Senator in 1828, reprobated the Tori/ principle of the enlargement 
and concentration of power, and advocated the Whig principle of the limitation and distribu- 
tion of power : his practices ivhile President of the United States convict him, under the criteria 
of his 0W71 Judgment, as an apostate ^^hig, a Tory, and a traitor to his country and her 
constitution. 

Mr. Van Buren having exerted his great experience in political matters, while a Senator, a 
member of General Jackson's cabinet, and Vice President, in "uniting, harmonizing, and 
directing, those with whom he acted," to promote executive encroachments on the other de- 
partments of the Government, and to concentrate all power in the Pre.«ident — as I have demon- 
strated in ilie foregoing sections — it remains now to say a few words on the uses and abuses he 
has made of those " concentrated powers" in the brief space since his election to the Presidency. 

I have already anticipated most of these details, by recitals and references incident to the First 
and Second Periods of life just reviewed; and all the themes of this Third Period being made 
familiar to thv public mind liy executive messages, secretaries' reports, congressional proceedings, 
public discussions, and news[)apaper notoriety, there is no occasion for me to dwell upon them 
here, though, in n practical sense, the most important period of the Magician's life, f have 



44 

taken a survey of the serpentine course by which Mr. Van Bnren wormed himself successively, 
stealthily, and upon trust, almost without inquiry, into high stations, till he actually reached the 
topmost pinnacle of honor — showing how artfully he established redoubts and safe-guards about 
his imaginary throne, even before he had attained the platform on which he j)Urposrd to erect 
it. Preparatory to a summary recapitulation of tho.=e fortresses of concentrated and usurped 
powers, I shall cite one more remarkahk instance of the will/ man\s fair professions, to show 
how Mr. Van Buren, while he was an humble suppliant before the People for small favors, 
condemned in advance his own subsequent acts, and, as a good ^Vliig, in a speech, sneered with 
inertable scorn upon the whole class of Tories who had ever practised the same acts be- 
fore him. 

In a speech in the Senate of the United Slates in the winter of 1827-'28, on Mr. Foote'.s 
motion to invest the Vice President with power to call to order for words spoken in debate, Mr. 
Van Buren gave a good description of " Whigs" and " Toni>:s," showing the hostility of the 
former against that ^^enlargement and concentration of power," which he represents the latter 
as ever seeking to achieve and grasp in their own hands ; taking occasion, at the same time, to 
eulogize the whig principles of ^'■limitation and distribution of power." But how entirely he 
lias reversed these professions by his practice, since he has officiated in the executive department, 
and particularly since he has been President of the United States, is at last in a fair way to be- 
come well known to every voter in the country. On the occasion above-mentioned, Mr. A'an 
Buren said : 

"It is the source from whence the power of (ailing to order had been claimed for the Vice President, which had 
excited /its anxiety. In claiming that power by implication, he said, principles had been advanced and earnestly 
supported, against which /i£ftlt"'il to be His 'duty,a\. least, to protest." "In every point of view, said Mr. Van 
Buren, in which this subject liad presented itself to his mind, it had produced but one sentiment, and lliat was iiN- 
auALiFiED OPPOSITION lo the PREROGATIVE Claimed for the chair. Although this claim of power is now for the first 
lime made, i\\e principle In which it originates is as old as the Government itself. I look upon it, sir, as the legiti- 
mate oflTspring of a school of politics which has, in limes past, agitated and greatly disturbed this country ; of a 
school, the leading principle of which may be traced to that areal source of poliiicafconlentions which have |jer- 
vaded every country where the rights of man were in any degree respected. I allude, sir. to that collision, which 
seems inseparable, from the nature of ujan, between the rights of the few and the many, to those never-ceasing 
conflicts between the advocates of the enlargement and concentration of power on the one hand, and its limitation 
and distribution on the other; conflicts which, in England, created ihe distinction between Whigs and Tories— 
the latter striving by all means within their reach to increase the influence and (/omm)'o« of the throne, at the 
expense of the common people ; and the former to counteract the exertions of their adversaries, by abridging thai 
dominion and influence, for the advancement of the rights and the consequent amelioration of the condition of the 
people_." Again, " No candid and well-informed man will for a moment pretend, that if the powers now claimed 
for this Government had been avowed at the time, or even had not been exfiressly disclaimed, there would kave 
been the slightest chance for the adoption of the constitution by the requisite number of the old thirteen Slates. 
But it was tattfied, (sdiil Blr. Van Buren.) and from the mo«nent of its adoption lo the present day, the spirit 
he had described, had been at work to obtain by construction \\ hat u-as not included or intended to he included in 
the grant." "It was then ihat l\\e inouarchical and am/007 «//ra7 character of the spirit he had described, was 
displayed in increasing efforts to wrest from the States the powers that justly belonged to them, to exercise such as 
had never been conferred, and to concentrate, as ya?- as jjracticable, aix, AUtuov.n^ ^'s the hands of the 
President."— (iSdc Holland, pages 285, 291.) 

Thus did Mr. Van Buren once solemnly protest against the "implication of power," and de- 
clared his " unqualified opposition to the pukrobativk it claims;'' a prerogative which is in- 
comparably more dangerous in the President of the United States than in the Vice President, 
the mere presiding officer of the Senate. He also referred this " implication of power," and its 
consequent "prerogative," to a school of politicians who, he says, are ever .seeking to enlarge 
and concentrate power in their own hands, whom he culls Tories, in contradistinction from 
Whigs. And, in his zeal for whig princi|iles, he even emliraces the occasion to calumniate many 
of our revolutionary fathers who framed our system of Government and set it in motion, emlira- 
cing General Washington, Mr. .Jetferson, and Mr. Madison, among the rest, of course, as a part 
of this school of politicians or Tories, who "advocate the enlargement and concentration of 
power in the hands of the few, in derogation of the rights of the mani/" for they advocated and 
pracli.sed, " implied" or " incident," executive powers that enure to the " res])onsibility" of the 
office, for the good of the service. Nay, he even extended this calumny by imputing, necessa- 
rily, to those and other eminent patriots, " eflbrts to wrest from the States the powers justly be- 
longing to them — to exercise powers by the General Government vi'hich hail never been con- 
ferred upon it — and to concentrate all authority in the hands of the President." 

Now, after this seemingly ardent manifestation of Whig principles, even unto the extreme of 
perpetrating an outrageous calumny against many of our best patriots of the Revolution, thi» 
simple question ari.ses — What has Mr. Van Buren doni;, since he attained the Presidential chair, 
to repair, to curtail, and restore this enlargement and concentration (»f power in the General 
Government, and especially in the hands of the President ' Has he taken a single .step towards 
it ? No, not one ! 

1st. Has he repudiated the incidental or implied executive power of making removals from 
office? Not he; far from it. He has not even contined himself to that wholesome limit pre- 
scribed by Mr. Madison, of power "incident to the executive office," lo remove* fou cavsi; af- 
Fr.cTiNfi THE GOOD OF THE PUBLIC sEuricE. On tlie contrary, he exercises this "implied 
power" of removal to the odious extent advocated by 'i'orits, (not for cause, for such, generally, 
being of his own spoils party, he does not remove, but) for the indulgence of the most fiendish 



45 

of monarchical prerogatives, to ptjxish his roi.iTicAL enemies ; and that, too, with less regarfl 
to the puhlic good than if he were exercising the province of hit^ personal rights or his privafe 
propertt/. 

2d. Has he restricted himself exclusively to the consideration of the good of the public service 
in making appointmentu ? He has not. Rather, he has made his appointments exclusively 
and avoioedli/ upon the spoils principle, of conferring rewards on zealous partisans for their party 
services, otherwise called a " payment of political debts" — palpably substituting his parti/ for his 
country — confirming, in a yet more aggravated form, this very charge of the Senate, on which 
they based his rejection as minister to England ; more aggravated, I say, because these very 
party appointments, as part of the system of reducing the cimimonwealth to a spoil, are sent to 
the Senate for their conlirmation, and which, as his party vassals, they do confirm. 

But this i» not all. Regarding the consequences of this latitudinous exercise of the correla- 
tive powers of removals and appointments, which are even pretended to be incidental or implied 
to the Executive oflice, in the extent to which they are used, there has sprung up), simultane- 
ously with this assumption of power, a system of peculations, fratids, and difalcations, that has 
jeoparded all the available resources of the Treasury, as the rightful spoils of the official party, 
to the utmost bounds that they think proper to go ; for there appears to be no definite or recog- 
nised limit to these depredations, except in the diflerent degrees of hardihood of the individuals 
practising them. 

This system manifests itself, 1st. In the enormous charges made against the Government on 
account of all casual jobs, from the most trivial to the most important, in every department of the 
Government, when such opportunities are afforded to the favorites of the Executive. 2d. In 
extra alhwances, unknown to law, for services alleged to hive been performed over and above 
the remuneration of the regular .salaries, or as being performed out of oflicial hours — whereas, 
there are no such casualties to authorize an allowance of any sort in those cases, the fixed compen- 
sation of law entitling the Government to the entire service of its officers, without further charge, 
unless Congress chooses to make a donation upon any extraordinary emergency. 3d. This 
system of depredations manifests itself in the defalcations of heckivers and disbursers of 
public money, to any amount that such officers may abstract, at intervals or by the lump, out of 
the moneys in their hands; which Mr. Van Buren considers to be "less objectionable in indi- 
viduals, than for corporations to use the public money" placed, on deposits with them by the 
authority of the Government ! 

3d. Finally, has Mr. V'an Buren confined himself to the constitutional injunction that the 
President " fihall from time to time give to Congress information of the state of the Uxirm, 
and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expe- 
DiEXTr' He has not. Ih regard to the sub-Treasury measure, particularly, he has also over- 
leaped the obvious limitation of this clause, and has taken the initiative, if not the entire, power 
of legislation into his own hands. In the first instance, he recommended th-; "consideration" 
of this measure, connected with a statement of the financial embarrassments of the whole coun- 
try, and of the banking institutions of the State.s, in his message to the called Congress in 1837 ; 
but that body did not think proper to adopt the measure. Having thus performed his c institu- 
tional duty, here the matter would have ended, had he a sincere regard for the " limitations of 
power." But, true to the Tory principles of "extending and concentrating power," which he 
has substituted for the whig principles that he once eulogized of "limiting and distributing 
power," he has, at every subsequent Congress, insisted upon the adoption of the same measure, 
which he had, in fact, no right to advert to as such, unconnected with further information of 
the state of the Union in that regard, which alone could justify his bringing it forward as a new 
measure, based upon the further and severally communicated [new] information, from time to 
time, of the state of the Union. But more: without the new facts and information, the ab- 
sence of which stamps the several renewed presentations of the same measure as an Executive 
dictation to Congress, he has taken steps, through his party managers in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, to insure a majority subservient to his ambition, by disfranchising a sovereign State 
in depriving her of her full representation, by excluding five of her six members, legally return- 
ed, before the House was organized and in a condition to pass judgment upon the returns of its 
members in any contested cases — thereby realizing a most daring encroachment upon the 
" rights of the States," which he once afli?cted to hold in such high veneration ! 

So far, then, from abandoning the specific enlargements of Executive power, or renouncing 
the encroachments on the legislative department, he has pressed them to the greatest extremity; 
and even beyond these, he has on several occasions made vigorous efforts to raise the Executive 
authority above that of the Judiciary Department ; which, however, has been as yet successfully 
resisted, and that, too, the more to theircredit, by a bench constituted of his predecessor's appoint- 
ments, in the proportion oi seven in nine. 

All the rest of Mr. Van Buren's Executive acts, which can in any degree be made subservient 
to party interest, which he holds above the interest of his country, are of a piece with this sum- 
mary, showing that he is, to all intents and puproses, an apostate Whig, a rank Tory, a traitor to 



46 

his country ami her constitution, for the sake of the hope to perpetuate his power, by basely 

holding up the commonwealth as a spoil to his deluded party ' 

(Ij'It must be obvious to the intelligent reader, that these few pages can only be ofl'ered, as 
a systematic outline, or frame-work, to be filled up by future details. 

But without these, the reader is now sufficiently initiated into the solecism, which equally sus- 
tains the truth that Mr. Van Buren did every thing, and advocated every opinion — and the con- 
trary of every thing and every opinion, that have been charged against him: Hence, his parti- 
sans dare deny the truth of those charges, when the fart is, that both allegations of his contra- 
dictory actions and opinions are true. He has been for and against every thing and every body, 
EVKRT OPINION and EVF.HY PARTT, as it happened to suit the varying phases of his ER- 
RATIC POLITICAL LIFE. But still it may be said, he has been constant in tliese, because 
they have subserved his pre-eminent constancy in the PURSUIT OF THE SPOILS OF 
OFFICE AND THE COiNCENTRATION OF POWER. 

From the remotest ages, mankind have been admonished of the inevitable fate of the hapless 
wight who " blows hot and cold with the same breath:'''' so the hypocritical example of the 
POLITICAL adventuker hcrc unmasked, will be held in perpetual remembrance as a warning 
to all future aspirants at lawless power ^^vtai to follow his footsteps; while the detection 
of his ambitious projects of self-aggrandizement on the ruins of our admirable system of Govern- 
ment, is happily destined to insure it a duration with the imperishal'le moral principle that will 
ever shudder at his history, and be taught thereby the lessons of ETERNAL VIGILANCE. 



Extract from the speech of the Hon. Wm. Cost Johmon, of Maryland, on the sub-Treasury 
bill, delivered in the House of Representatives, June 25. 1840. 

"I maintain, Mr. Chairman, that the want of character, the want of knowledge, and the want 
of honor and virtue in our public functionaries, is the primary cause of all the evils which oppress 
the iieople. Look at Mr. Van Buren and his Cabinet. There is not one of them all who po- 
sesses second-rHte talents, and not one that possesses any other principle of action than selfish- 
ness and a cringing lust of office and lucre. And Miss Martineau must have alluded to Mr. Van 
Buren's cabinet councils when she said that " the school of ignorance is the innermost court of 
Bedlam." 

" Mr. Van Buren will tolerate no one near him unless he is a sycophant and a ductile tool 
His doctrine is that of Sir Robert Walpole, that his most useful supporters are those who can he 
bought; and, to support his administration, men and newspapers should be purchased. ' How 
happens it,' said Walpole, 'that no one contradicts me or beats me at billiards except Doctor 
Monsey V 'They get places,' replied the Doctor; 'I am thought an honest fellow, and get an 
invitation to dinner.' Mr. Van Buren is impatient of contradiction, and his friends know it; 
and all his boisterous supporters prefer 'places' to an 'invitation to dinner.' " 

'•The only difference between the two remarkable personages is in their intellect. Walpole 
has wiitten things worth being read, and said things worth being remembered; whilst Mr. Van 
Buren has never done either. Bribery is the price with which both have sustained themselves, 
and the public treasury and public offices have been the exchequer which has furnished both 
with the means of payment. 

" Mr. Van Buren has not studied the characters of the prominent men of his own party, in re- 
lation to their intelligence, public spirit, and fitness for office, so as to select the best as his coun- 
sellors but to discard those of most honor, or to tantalize them with the hope of place which 
they have never got or will get, in order to retain them in service; whilst he has (arefuUy selec- 
ted the most profligate of his friends for most of the distinguished places within his immense pat- 
ronage." 

" For such reasons have the most pliant men been selected for cabinet officers. Men whose 
ambition never exteiuled beyond a subordinate clerkship with a salary of fifteen hundred dollars a 
year- who, in their wildest visions, never dreamed of being exalied to an office of six thousand, 
and of becoming ministers of State. The late Postmaster General is the prominent instance. 
But he had renilered himself infamous before the Legislature of Kentucky, and that circumstance 
recommended him at once to the Executive favor, and induced .Mr. Van Buren to lake him to 
his bosom. His art at destroying letters placed him at the head of tlie Post Office Department, 
who speaks about as truly in his last circular as he did on his voir dire before tlie Legislature, 
when he proclaims that he has become poor in office. Become poor on a salary of six thousand 
dollars a year, wiih the privilege of picking open dead letters ! But the dead tell no tales. What 
will the public think of a man becoming poor on six thousand a year, who informed Mr. Clay 
by letter that all that he aspired to was a sabiry of fifteen hundred per annum T' 

"This moralist, with lowly meekness, lectures the locofocos to observe morality ! ! It is true 
that the ' He.iven-born' man does, to all external appearances, wear a look of sad contrition, and 
a sackcloth and ashes countenance ; and I verily believe that he is 



• 47 

" As mild a nwuner'J man 

" As ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." 

And this individual is Mr. Van Buren's chief adviser and hosom confidant, his chamber counsel- 
lor;, and ihey are as intimate and as loving as two ringdoves. 

" I ask you, Mr. Chairman, ' what must be the priest where a monkey is the god V And who 
has the President selected to supply the vacancy occasioned by Mr. Kendall's resignation ! One 
who was thrown by accident into the Senate by some sudden freak of parly convulsion, and who 
fdled his place there but to outrage the sentiments of his State, as if to punish it lor its folly in 
giving office to one who was willing to place himself in market-overt, to be purchased by the 
President ? Whose very instincts and appearance illustrate to the conviction of an infidel the 
force of the remark — ' the ox knoweth his master's crib.' Who never aspired to a higher office 
than he once filled of a village postmaster, and with the prodigality peculiar to the Executive, he 
has given him an office worth six thousand a year, when he could have purchased his services for 
a salary of six hundred. But this appointment is only another proof of the motives which T have 
.stated actuate the President. Nine out of ten of those men who hold offices of salaries from three 
to nine thousand dollars annually, would have been glad to have accepted subordinate places 
which would have suited their capacity for a thousand or twelve hundred." 

" If an evil genius had had absolute dominion over the nation, it would have placed just such 
men in power as are now in place to scourge the people. They are tortured with distress, bank- 
ruptcy, and poverty; and things are getting worse everyday, and will continue so UNTIL 
GENERAL HARRISON IS ELECTED." 



RECOMMENDATIONS. 



The following extracts are taken from the notices with which this |)amphlet has been favored : 

FKOM THE NATIONAL ISTELLIGliNCER OF SF,PTEMBEB 24. 

" Without having an opportunity of reading it through, we have been enabled to look over it 
sufficiently to perceive that it has been gotten up with great research, and arranged with perspi- 
cuity and method, and promises to enlist considerable public interest, as a text book on the sub- 
jects it treats of." 



FROIVI THE MADISONIAN OF SEPTEMBER 25. 

"Those who desire full and minute information respecting the life, opinions, and political his- 
tory of Mr. Van Buren, should jirocure a copy of the pamphlet just published by Mr. Morrison 
of this city, entitled, "A Word in Season," &,c. &c. The author has used great care and in- 
dustry in the compilation, and presents his facts in a clear, methodical, and interesting manner." 



FROM THE INTLLIGENCER OF OCTOBER 3. 

Messr.". Editors: In reading the pamphlet entitled "Review of the Political Life and Opin- 
ions of Mr. Van Buren, by a Harrison Democrat," I am struck with the great research, distin- 
guished talent, and correct reasoning of the author, together with the astounding facts developed ; 
and I sincerely feel, as one of the people, real gratitude towards the writer for his great industry 
and zeal in behalf of the country, in its present distressed and suffering state, and should feel 
happy in knowing that the work is widely spreading and universally read, as 1 think it richly 
deserves to be. AN IMPARTIAL OBSERVER, j 

"A WORD IN SEASON." 
TO THE TIPPECANOE CLUBS OF THE UNION. 
The undersigned cheerfully unite in bearing testimony to the merits of a pamphlet, recently 
published by W. M. Morrison of this city, entitled "A Word in Season; or. Review of the Po- 
litical Life and Opinions of Martin Van Buren." We cannot but regret, however, that it was 
not published sooner, though we believe that by an active circulation much good may yet be ef- 
fected ; and therefore we warmly recommend it to the patronage of the "Tippecanoe Clubs of the 
Union," to whom it has been dedicated by the author. 

WM. L. BRENT. GEORGE SWEENY 

P. R. FENDALL. PETER FORCE. 

R. S. COXE. ROBER'i' J. BRENT. 

TH. L. THRUSTON. WALTER LENOX. 
W. A. BRADLEY. JAMES F. HALIDAY 

DONALD MACLEOD. J. GIDEON, Jr. 
Washington, Octob.r, 1840. 



48' 
CONTENTS. 



PRELIMIIVARY. 

'■ We contend fur a wpll-rcgulated Deuiucracy." 

[John Marshall's speech m the Virgiiifa Convention oh the adoption of Die Constitution 

The true Democracy — of Slalesnien, Patriots, and lovers of the Constitution — contrasted with the 
false Democracy of restless, ambitious innovators, and enemies of the Constitution. 



FIRST PERIOD. 

" Even at that early age, loo, [fourteen, when he commenced the study of law,] Mr. Van Buren is rep- 
resented, by those who knew hhn, to have had a spirit of observation, v.ith regard io public events und lUe persona! 
(lispositons and characters of those around him, which gave an earnest of his iuiure jnoficiei.ci/ in the science 
OF POLITICS and of the human heart." 

[Holland's Life and Political Opinions of Martin Van Buren, page 16. 

I. Mr. Van Buren's had faith, double dealing, and disingenuousness, exemphfied in the case of 
his conduct to De Witt Clinton : — united with the Hudson and Hartford Convention Federal- 
ists in opposition to Mr. Madison and the late war against England : — Rufus King, James A. 
Hamilton, &c , his political coadjutors. 

II. Mr. Van Buren an abolitionist in heart — advocated the e.xtension of the right of suffrage, and 
citizenship, to free negroes in New York, whereby they are also eligible to ofTice ; — he also aj>- 
provcs the admission of slaves to testify, in court, against white citizens 

III . Mr. Van Buren opposed the adoption of a bill of rights with the New York constitution — he 
opposed the extension of the elective franchise — and he opp'Jised the amenability of the higher 
officers of State to the ordeal ot popular elections : the inconsistency of his sentiments on 
the veto power — his advoVacy of long terms and re-election to the chief Executive — the incon- 
sistency of his doctrines and practice respecting the " spoils of office ;" a system of which he 
was the unenvied author. 



SECOND PERIOD. 

" His long study of the human lieart, [speaking of Mr. V. B. when^le entered tlie .Senate,] his great expenenc-; 
m political matters, and his pre-eminent good sense, had given him a power of interpreting the i^opular will, .ind 
uniting, harmonizing, and directing the feelings of thsoe wiih whom he acted, which few men ever attain to." 

^Holland's Life, <St ., page iOs. 

I. Mr. Van Buren, uniformly, for a series of years, has been an advocate for a tariff or imposts 
for the protection of manufactures — His subsequent repudiation of his first love, as an over- 
ture to the South — His support and denunciation of internal improvement, still more diversi- 
fied and inconsistent — His claim of initiative legislation, alone, brings the money power very 
much within his grasp. 

II. Mr. Van Buren's inconsistency respecting the constitutionality of a Bank of the United States ; 
His combined safety bank system in New Vork, for political purposes: Failure of his attempt 
to seduce or intimidate the United States Bank to the embraces of Executive dictation — as a 
substitute for which, he introduces his New York system, by combining State banks, as de- 
positories of the Treasury, under Executive control : Explosion of the system occasion.^ a re- 
sort t(* a sub-Treasury bank, in order to accomplish the original design of usurping, concen- 
trating, and monopolizing the money power. 

III. Mr. Van Buren the author and pcrfecter of the great spoils system — The direct s[ioils of 
office only a branch of that system — A key to the machinery used to bring this whole systcin 
to perfection, and concentrate it in the hands of the President, consisting of the Press, thf" 
Post Office, the Armed Force, and the Appointing Power — Their several uses and abuses in 
the hands of a corrupt Executive, in monopolizing the whole money-power, and reducing 
" the Commonwealth to a spoil.'' 



THIRD PERIOD. 

•'1 allude, sir, to Iiil; collision, which sceiiis inseparable, fnim the nature of man, between tlie riglu.i of the few and 
the many, to those never ceasing cunllicis between the advocates of the enlargement and concentration of power on 
liie one hand, and its limitalionand dislriUitioo on ihe other: conflicts wliich iiiEnglaud created the distinction be- 
tween Whigs and Tories- ihe latter striving Ijy all means within their reach to increase the influence and dominion 
of the Throne, at the expense of the couunon jieople ; and the former to counteract the exertionsof their adversaries, 
by aViridcing that dominion and influence, for the advancement of the rights and consptiueni amelioration of the con- 
dition of Ihe people." — ( I '«" Buren's speech on Foote's resolution, session lS27-'iS.) 

Mr. Van Buren, while a Senator in 1828, reprobated the Tory principle of the enlargement and 
concentration of power, and advocated the Whig principle of the limitation and distribution of 
power : his practices while President of the United States convict him, under the criteria of hi.s 
own judgment, as an apostate Whig, a Tory, and a traitor to his country and her constitution. 



Primed at the Intelligencer Otfice. 



